Book-bot.com - read famous books online for free

Run to Earth - A Novel by M. E. (Mary Elizabeth) Braddon
page 314 of 733 (42%)
proceedings of the lady at the castle.

The county people discovered that Lady Eversleigh never left Raynham;
that she devoted herself to the rearing of her child as entirely as if
she had been the humblest peasant-woman; and that she expended more
money upon solid works of charity than had ever before been so spent by
any member of the Eversleigh family, though that family had been
distinguished by much generosity and benevolence.

The county people shrugged their shoulders contemptuously. They could
not believe in the goodness of this woman, whose parentage no one knew,
and whom every one had condemned.

She is playing a part, they thought; she wishes to impress us with the
idea that she is a persecuted martyr--a suffering angel; and she hopes
thus to regain her old footing amongst us, and queen it over the whole
county, as she did when that poor infatuated Sir Oswald first brought
her to Raynham. This was what the county people thought; until one day
the tidings flew far and wide that Lady Eversleigh had left the castle
for the Continent, and that she intended to remain absent for some
years.

This seemed very strange; but what seemed still more strange, was the
fact that the devoted mother was not accompanied by her child.

The little girl, Gertrude, so named after the mother of the late
baronet, remained at Raynham under the care of two persons.

These two guardians were Captain Copplestone, and a widow lady of forty
years of age, Mrs. Morden, a person of unblemished integrity, who had
DigitalOcean Referral Badge