My Lady Clancarty

IT was nearly a week later and Lady Betty’s chair was passing down the main street of Newmarket when she espied Denis at the corner of a lane that ran between a mercer’s shop an...

ALTHORPE, called in Domesday Books “Ollethorp,”—and held before the Conquest, as the freehold of Tosti and Snorterman,—had been the home of the Spencers since the days of Henry...

Unconvinced, Alice brought the garment, a beautiful and costly thing frosted with rare lace, and as she helped Lady Betty put it on she was more and more impressed with its charms.

MEANWHILE, under the same roof, but in far different quarters, the young Irishman called Richard Trevor was talking to his servant, the same who had led his horse up and down in...

POOR Lady Betty, half distracted, fled from the house into Leicester Fields, trying to find the party that had preceded her with her husband as a prisoner. The darkness and the...

THERE was a ball that night at Newmarket, but Lady Clancarty did not go, in spite of the commands and entreaties of Lady Sunderland. The elder countess was particularly anxious...

THERE was no finer race-course in the country in those days than the long heath at Newmarket, and there for years the court of England kept festival. Charles the Second came the...

IT happened that when Lady Clancarty came back from her visit to the house in the forest, weary and tear-stained but happier and more peaceful, she found herself in trouble. She...

IN spite of Alice’s warning, in spite of the deadly peril that surrounded him, Clancarty lingered at his wife’s side. It was hard to say farewell, hard to leave her, and though...

IT was at night too, a week later, that Lady Betty’s coach rumbled up the long street at Newmarket. But no moon shone; instead, the rain came down in torrents and the wind dashe...

At her feet the lawn was close clipped and green; beyond was a garland of many colors, roses by hundreds and tens of hundreds, the warmth and glow of the sun upon them; behind t...

IT was a small and desolate room, with bare rafters overhead, and the wind rattling fiercely at the old casements, while Denis was trying to keep a sickly fire of green wood ali...

BETWEEN two vases that overflowed with scarlet geraniums, the worn stone steps of the inn-yard descended directly upon a gravel path in the old garden. The path—flanked on eithe...

IT was after sundown and the light was dim in the great gallery of Althorpe. Candles were set in silver sconces at intervals down its whole length of over a hundred feet, but be...

KENSINGTON PALACE was an offence in those days to English eyes. The burning of Whitehall had furnished William with the opportunity to escape, not only from the air of London, w...

NIGHT and the rain departed together. The wind had swept the sky clear, not even a white feather curled there; it was blue—blue as English skies seldom are. Lady Betty, opening...

THE sun had not yet risen: earth and sky were softly gray and brown, with green where the meadows lay, and purple in the shadows. Morning, like a white flower with a heart of go...

LADY SUNDERLAND was, as usual, playing cards with her crony. The game was gleek, and Lady Dacres was determined to be avenged for the loss of the Chinese dragon—grinning hideous...

LADY BETTY’S weakness passed. She was too strong, too loving, and too determined by nature, to give way to the tears and sighs of a whining woman. So stern was her face and so r...

WHEN Lady Clancarty ascended the water stairs on her return from the Tower she was outwardly calm, the floodtide of her emotion having spent itself in the outburst at the Traito...

IT happened that Lady Russell advised delay in the appeal to the king; she wished to wait for the results of the interview between his majesty and the three dukes. Surely no fai...

LADY BETTY and her companion walked on. The crowd, still huzzaing and noisy about the victors, was dropped behind them, all its gorgeous colors knotted into one huge rosette upo...

MEANWHILE, Alice Lynn, with a pale face and watchful eyes, ran down the gallery that opened into Lady Clancarty’s private apartments; she locked the door at the upper end and th...

A SMOKING teapot and some cups of India ware adorned a table of polished mahogany, the very best tea service in the possession of the landlord of the Lion’s Head. And before it...

THAT night was the night of Devonshire’s great ball and all Newmarket was agog, streets were blocked with fours and sixes—the great coaches jammed in rows, with fighting, sweari...

THE star of Lady Clancarty’s fortune for that week at Newmarket was an evil star. For it was the very day after that fateful interview with her husband, a day that dawned after...

“You have a saucy tongue, Elizabeth,” replied her brother rudely, turning white rather than red, for in this young man’s disposition anger went white, not red. “’Twould go hard...

THOUGH the stars were out, the night was black as pitch and the courtyard of the inn was only lighted by the broad bands of red that flared across it from the gaping doors of ha...

The two girls were in Betty’s bedroom, a solitary taper burning on the table. In this rosy twilight both faces showed indistinctly. Betty’s finery lay upon a chair near by; she...

THE night of suspense—longer than a year of happiness—wore to an end, because all things end. At noon Lady Betty stood in Lady Russell’s drawing-room, leaning against the window...

AT the door of Leicester House Lady Clancarty’s coach stood waiting to take her to the ball at my Lord Bridgewater’s, and she had quite forgotten both the ball—which was a grand...

“Even if I do not fall, you will take it to her with that message,” continued the earl, looking across the meadow at the approaching figures of his opponent and their seconds an...

WHEN Lady Clancarty fled wildly from her father’s house, poor Alice was too much overwhelmed with the agony of the recent scene to know what to do. For the moment she gave way o...