Court Netherleigh

# Court Netherleigh by Mrs. Henry Wood

This is Volume II of a three-volume Victorian novel by Mrs. Henry Wood, author of East Lynne. "The Day of Reckoning," the opening chapter, establishes the domestic crisis: Mrs. Selina Dalrymple, impulsively overspending on fashionable dress, has incurred a substantial debt with her milliner, Madame Damereau, who threatens to inform her husband Oscar of the obligation. Unable to secure funds from her tightfisted spouse or assistance from family, Selina resolves to pledge her jewelry—valued at five hundred pounds—to a pawnbroker. The narrative traces her mounting anxiety, deception, and desperate measures to conceal her financial predicament from Oscar and prevent the public scandal of debt exposure. The subsequent chapters develop the consequences of this initial transgression through entangled financial, social, and romantic complications.