The Craze of Christina — page 15: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

The Craze of Christina. II These penalties were of an exceedingly strin- gent character. If Clifford dismissed James Docker from bis service, the sum of £20,000 was to be diverted from the estate and paid over to a second cousin of Mr. Greville’s, a certain Charles Greville, or failing him, to his eldest living child. If Clifford absented himself from Esselton Hall for twenty-four hours longer than the pre- scribed week, then a sum of £50,000 was to be given to the same person; whilst if he com- mitted the dire offense of matrimony within the forbidden period, Esselton Hail and the whole of the property appertaining to it, to- yvether with all the very large sums of money that had been for many years accumulating in the funds and other securities, were to pass completely away from him, also to the benefit of Charles Greville and his eldest child, whilst the unfortunate young man was to be instantly reduced to a small legacy of £5,000, and would therefore return to very nearly the same poverty from which his uncle’s magnificent be- quest had so lately rescued him. In short, by the terms of this most inexplica- ble will, Mr. Greville’s heir—who was twenty- five—was compelled to reside for three years in solitary bachelorhood in this vast and gloomy connlicbooolks.co