The Works of George W. M. Reynolds — page 27: what you’re looking at

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

10 REYNOLDS’ WORKS hatred which he had conceived for the graceless debauchee, and he accordingly returned Ralph’s letter without a com- ment. Stung to the quick by what he termed this heartless insult, and goaded to desperation by his necessities, Ralph Farefield began seriously to think of some deadly revenge against his uncle. Nevertheless, the pressure of cireum- stances compelled him to go and draw from Lord Saxondale’s bankers all those arrears of income which he had hitherto scornfully left untouched; and as more than three years had now elapsed since he was discarded, he had nine hundred pounds to receive. Forgetting for the moment his thoughts of vengeance, he plunged headlong once more into dissipa- tion; but he was shortly startled from his debaucheries by the astounding intelligence that Lady Saxondale was a third time a mother, and on this occasion had presented her husband with a son. Ralph Farefield was consequently no longer the heir to a lordly title and vast estate; but then, as he observed to his dissolute associates, ‘‘it was but a miserable new-born babe that stood between him and the hope of still inheriting the ancestral wealth and honours.” We have now explained to the reader how it was and under what peculiar circumstances the venerable Lord Saxondale contracted a second marriage at the age of sixty. Four years had elapsed since the day when he led Harriet Clifton to the altar, and he was consequently now sixty-four, This was the year 1825, when in the earlier part of the chap- ter we first introduced his lordship to the reader. Lady Saxondale was at this time a splendid woman, and she filled her exalted position with as much graceful dignity as if she had been from her very birth reared in the atmosphere of aristocracy and fashion. Not once did the old nobleman regret having married her; for not merely was his vindictive feeling against his nephew at length gratified by the birth of an heir, but he had also experienced much real domestic happiness in his recurrence to a wedded state. For, as he had foreseen, his wife regarded him with gratitude as the author of the brilliant position to which she had been raised; and though she could not positively love a man old enough to be her grandfather, nor indeed had a heart susceptible of the tender feeling at all, yet she behaved toward him with kindness, and was ever solicitous for his comfort and weli- being. CONNIE IOO KS (E(0)