Violet Lisle — page 23: what you’re looking at

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

AT PENARTH CASTER. 17 Fmind and body there had never hear any confidences wor- | thy of the name to make. 4 She had told him to go see the world, and he had gone _ as a young prince might have gone, scattering his gold Ke right and left, meeting everywhere with a welcome that - was most royal—a welcome that was accorded par tly to _ his wealth, partly to his title, and very much to his joy- ous, manly nature and his extremely good looks. | Perhaps he had unintentionally broken some hearts— ~ his own had never been seriously touched, though he had ' been the object of many a well-calculated attack from the - combined forces of designing mamma and_ gulileless 4 maiden. Allsuch assaults Lady Darlington had either a eee or smiled at in her own lofty fashion. In her in- - fatuation she believed the chief reason of Guy’s insensi- - bility to b2 the failure on her part to urge him to the selection of his life’s partner. An infatuation uncon- _ sciously fostered by him, who knowing nothing of love but as he had read, talked so rationally of it with his mother that she could not help but think with him that he would marry as a matter of course when the time came. It was the coming of that time that was the cause of all the trouble. The time had already come when both mother and son were ready. He had met Violet Lisle; _ the countess had chosen a mate for him from among his - peers. It was to bring the lady of her choice and her son _ together that she had urged the visit to Penarth Castle, ,: ‘where they so seldom went, and where, under the pretext of a little shooting, Guy could be free to meet her witha _ very few select friends. Lady Sibyl Coldenham had every attribute which the daughter-in-law of the Countess of Darlington should have. She was beautiful, accomplished, gentle, of irre- -proachable lineage, rich, and willing. At least her father, the Marquis of Coldenham, said she was willing, and the patrician mother of Guy looked no further. She had married as her parents had chosen, she had been as happy as it was necessary for one in her position to be, and, moreover, Guy would «marry as she ChOSS~- 98 argument In itself. The days after that first meeting in the abbey woods hai multiplied into weeks, and still nothing had been said _by either Violet or Guy to inform the father of the one or the mother of the other of what had happened. Each shrank from doing what might by some chance interrupt