Lord Oakburn's Daughters (Volume 1) (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: CHAPTER III. MISS LETHWAIT. In a magnificent reception-room of Portland Place sat the Earl of Oakburn. and Lady Jane Chesney. It was the middle of June, and the London season was at its height. The whole of May, Lord Oakburn and his daughters had stayed at Chesney Oaks; he had now taken this house, furnished, for three months. Chesney Oaks was in the market to let: to let to anybody who would take it and pay rent for it; and the countess dowager had worked herself into a fume and a fret when she first saw the advertisement, and had come down upon the earl in a burst of indignation, demanding to know what he meant by disgracing the family. The earl answered her: he was quite capable of doing it; and a hot war of words waged for some minutes between them, and neither would give way. The earl had reason on his side, though; if his means were not sufficient to keep up Chesney Oaks, better that he should let it than allow it to go to ruin through unoccupation. So Chesney Oaks was in the hire market, and old Lady Oakburn told her sailor nephew that he deserved to have his ears boxed, that she should never forgive him, and then she withdrew in dudgeon to her house in Kensington Gardens. And the earl devoutly wished she might never come out of it to torment him again. Indeed there was scarcely a poorer peer on Great Britain's roll than the new Earl of Oakburn; but to him and to Jane this poverty was as very riches.- His net revenue would be little, if any, more than- three thousand per annum; as to the rent he expected to get from the letting of Chesney Oaksr it would nearly all go in keeping the place in proper repair. Chesney Oaks had no broad lands attaching to it; the house was good, and the ornamental gardens were good; but these are not the things that yield large revenu...