Holmby House; A Tale of Old Northamptonshire (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: " Give him a gallop, Gracey," says she, with a ringing laugh at her friend's obvious misgivings. " Why, Sir Giles himself could hardly ride my Bayard if I let him get as fresh as you do that riotous pet of yours. Silly Grace, you spoil everything you come near. What a tyrant you will make of your husband, my dear, if ever you get one!" and she bent her beautiful figure to pat her horse's neck in a bewitching attitude, which was not lost, as it was meant not to be, on old Sir Giles, or the busy falconer, or the grinning serving-men?nay, not even on the lad of sixteen, who gazed on her open-mouthed, with a ludicrous expression of stupefied amazement and delight. Mary Cave dearly loved admiration wherever she could get it. Left early in life to her own devices, brought up chiefly abroad, and transferred from a foreign convent to a foreign Court, she had acquired, even in the first flush of youth, a habit of self-reliance and a decision of character seldom to be observed in those of the softer sex who have not passed through the crucible of much pain and much tribulation. Clever and quick-witted, with strong passions and strong feelings, she nursed an ambition which was stronger than them all. She had the knack, partly natural, partly the result of keen observing powers, of detecting at once the mental value, and, so to speak, the moral weight, of those with whom she came in contact; and this gift, so dangerous to a woman, necessarily imparted a harshness to her character, and robbed her of that trusting, clinging tendency which is woman's greatest charm. Young as she was, she busied herself in all the intrigues of the day, and her beauty, her fascinating manners, her extraordinary influence over everything that wore a beard, rendered her a most dangerous enemy, a most desirable an...