The New Monthly Magazine (Volume 114) (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: AGNES WATERLOW. EY THE AUTHOR OF "ASHLEY/ A Family group were assembled one day at the country seat of the Earl of Hartledon. On a sofa near the fire?for though it was late spring, and the weather had come in warm and genial, the invalid required heat?lay a lad of ten years and a few months. It was Viscount Elster, the earl's eldest son. An attack of scarlet fever in the early spring, which he did not die in, but which left its dying effects behind, had reduced him to a state of weakness that seemed to preclude his eventually rallying. Some deemed that the disorder had not been judiciously treated by the physician: but, whether or no, consumption appeared to have supervened, though it fluctuated much. The boy's sister, Lady Maude, a child nearly nine years old, was seated away, on a stool, threading beads: her half-brother, Reginald, between four and five, stood looking on, and also a little girl of three, Lady Anne. The Countess of Hartledon, the earl's second wife, a young and elegant woman, stood at the open window, talking, in an under tone, to her husband's sister, Lady Laura Level, who had only that morning arrived from abroad; another sister, Lady Margaret Cooper, also on a visit, sat close to the invalid; a cumbersome-looking old lady, short and round, and as fine as gauzes, and paint, and flaxen false curls could make her, dozed on the other side the fire, and the earl himself sat reading, at the distant side window. " I suppose there is little hope of him ?" remarked Lady Laura, pursuing the conversation in the same whispered tone. " Death appears to be stamped on his face." " I fear there is not," replied Lady Hartledon; " though, some days, he scarcely seems to have anything the matter with him: to-day is one of his good days. But I do not say what I ...