Stories with a Vengeance — page 73: what you’re looking at

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

LORD SEVERNOAK*S DAUGHTER. BY M. H. H THERE was no doubt about it—Lord| Cecil came down from their high estate Severnoak was ruined. It is a common!/and hid themselves from the world. story enough—a confiding employer and a rascally agent. For many years Mr. Cloverly had all the management of Lord Severnoak’s vast estates, and during that time he persistently threw dust in the too- confiding lord’s eyes. Being allowed to do just what he lhked, he feathered nis own nest sufficiently, and then removed it, feathers and all, to the land where most rogues and vagabonds shelter themselves from the avenging arm of justice. Mr. Cloverly set up a princely establishment in one of the most fashionable localities in New York, and flourished as we frequently see the wicked flourish in this paradoxical world of ours. There were plenty found to say that it: served Lord Severnoak right—that he should have looked after his own affairs better ; and these, be it remarked, were his most intimate friends, who ought to have known that Lord Severnoak was too high- minded and honourable himself to suspect his agent, and as Mr. Cloverly was a great deal cleverer than his employer, let us say, without entering into details, the riches changed hands and the ruin came. The swindler was scarcely at the other side of the “herring-pond” when the creditors, in hungry packs, came down upon the unfortunate nobleman; and before he could realize the extent of his misfortune he found himself stripped of everything, and, with his only daughter, very glad indeed to accept the shelter of a small house, originally tenanted by a steward, and which the creditors offered him as a temporary abode until the property should be sold and the purchaser should take pos- session. So Lord Severnoak and his daughter Google Good Mary Shadwell, Cecil’s faithful old governess and companion, refused to leave them. She was a distant cousin of the Courtnayes, and had saved money in their service—a considerable sum—which, to her, came in very handily at this period. She secretly furnished the little house from cellar to attic, and reaped a rich reward from the father’s and daughter’s looks of astonishment and pleasure as the various articles of comfort, and even luxury, met their eyes. When Cecil was a baby, her godmother left her two hundred a-year, a bequest which Lord Severnoak, at the time, good- naturedly smiled at, but which now, by an unexpected revolution of the wheel, was all they had to depend upon. There were great sales at the Castle; old plate, old china, splendid furniture, and the contents of the picture-gallery, which was at once the pride and boast of the county. The brokers, agents, and such gentry thered, like vultures around carrion, intent upon bargains; such a sale comes but once in a century, and the aforesaid gentry spent two or three days of the most unalloyed pleasure, departing well satisfied when all was over; and the grand old Castle was left dismantled and forlorn, to be tenanted only by rats and spiders. No purchaser had as yet been found for the estates when, some fifteen months later, Lord Severnoak sat alone in the little room called by courtesy his library. He was a noble-looking old man, with hair white as snow, and his face seamed and wrinkled with many lines of care. He had been reading, but the book now lay upon his knee, with one finger between the leaves. His eyes were fixed upon the CY, JOO S CO)