BY
MRS OLIPHANT
AUTHOR OF ‘CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD,’ ETC.
STEREOTYPE EDITION
WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS
EDINBURGH AND LONDON
MDCCCLXXVI
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN BLACKWOOD’S MAGAZINE
TO
MY ETON BOYS
C. F. O.
F. R. O.
F. W.
Two ladies were seated in a great dim room, partially illuminated byfits and starts with gleams of firelight. The large windows showed apale dark sky, in which twilight was giving place to night, and acrosswhich the brown branches of the trees, rough with the buds of March,tossed wildly in a hurricane of wind, burdened with intermittent blastsof rain—rain that dashed fiercely against the windows a handful at atime, then ceased till some new cloud was ready to discharge its angryshower. Something fiercely pers