Lady Grace; A Novel (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1901 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XIX. THE NEW DEAN. Ten years What a slice it seems to take out of the history of a life Ten weary years --and the heart preying upon itself, its sorrows, and its blighted hopes, all that long while --Cyrilla's heart. Ten years For in this last chapter or two we have been telling of the past; now we have, so to say, come again to the present. It is not so very long since Mary Dynevor was married to Charles Baumgarten; her two sisters Regina and Grace are also married. It was Thursday afternoon, and the cathedral bell was ringing for service; a few stragglers, half-a-dozen at the most, came leisurely towards the cloisters. Oldchurch is never very full in October of the prebendal families. Pacing what was called the Green Walk--a convenient promenade hard by, near the deanery and the prebendal houses--was a fair, attractive-looking woman, with a sweet, sad face. The smooth, open brow was indented with two upright middle lines, that unmistakable sign of care; they used not to be there; and the blue eyes wore an expression that told their owner lived much in the inward life. She was but a year or two past thirty; she did not look more; nevertheless her hair began to be streaked with silver. It was Cyrilla. Ten years have passed over her head since that great trouble fell upon her; and ten years make a change. There were other changes, too, at Oldchurch. The pleasant bishop had passed away. He had been translated, not to a better appointment; not to be Primate of All England, or even to one of the three desirable sees, but to a land where mitres are not. Bishops, for the most part, live to a good old age; he of Oldchurch had died young--comparing him with some of those very ancient ones, who seem to last out for ever. The ultra...