Anna Lombard

Anna Lombard
by Victoria Cross
Author of "Life's Shop Window", "Paula," "A Girl of the Klondike," etc.
1901
KENSINGTON PRESS
18 EAST SEVENTEENTH ST., NEW YORK
DEDICATED TO
"Verona's summer hath not such a flower."

PREFACE.
I HAVE been challenged by certain papers to state my intentions in writing "Anna Lombard." This is my reply: I endeavored to draw in Gerald Ethridge a character whose actions should be in accordance with the principle, laid down by Christ, one that would display, not in word but in his actual life, that gentleness, humility, patience, charity, and self-sacrifice that our Redeemer himself enjoined. It is a sad commentary on our religion of to-day that a presumably Christian journal --The Daily Chronicle--should hold this Christ-like conduct up to ridicule and contempt, stigmatize it as "horrid absurdity," and declare that for such qualities a man ought to be turned out of their service. I challenge The Daily Chronicle and all who follow its opinion to find one act which does not reflect Christ's own teaching, committed by Gerald Ethridge. He forgives the sinner, raises the fallen, comforts the weak. He works and suffers to reclaim the pagan and almost lost soul of Anna Lombard. Fearlessly, and with the Gospel of Christ in my hand, I offer this example of his teaching to the great Christian public for its verdict, confident that I shall be justified by it.
VICTORIA CROSS.

ANNA LOMBARD.
CHAPTER I.
A FLOOD of glaring yellow light fell from the chandeliers overhead, a sheen of light seemed to be flung back from the polished, slippery, glittering floor which mirrored a thousand lights above and a hundred lesser lights fixed to the walls, dazzling hi white and gold. There was so much light, so much glitter, that it seemed to hurt the eyes coming directly from the soft, dark night outside. It seemed to wound mine as I stepped through the long window open to the marble piazza where I had been sitting, silent, by a pillar, alone with the gorgeous Eastern night.
The music, too, was stirring and martial rather than soothing. It was the splendid band of the Irish Grenadiers, and just then they were playing for all they were worth. It seemed as if some one had bet them they could not make a noise, and they had bet that they could. From end to end the room was one blaze of color, the scarlet and gold of countless uniforms standing out prominently in the general scheme. There were comparatively few present in plain civilian dress and no undress uniforms were to be found, for it was an occasion such as might not be known again for two or three years, or more, in that part of the country. It was the ball given by the commissioner of Kalatu in honor of the viceroy, on the latter passing through that station.
I stood leaning against the pillar of the window by which I entered the room, watching idly the brilliant, swaying crowd before me, and wondering how much real joy, pleasure, and gayety there was in the room in proportion to the affected amount of all these.
For myself, I felt singularly mentally weary and disheartened, yet I was generally considered a much-to-be-nvied person, one of Fortune's particular favorites. I was foung not yet thirty, though sometimes, possibly the result of much severe study, my brain and inner being seemed singularly old I had, some five years before, come iDut head of the list in the Indian Civil Service examination, and had been granted the coveted position of assistant commissioner; my pay was good, my position excellent, my work light, and, indeed, far beneath the capacity my severe education had endowed me with; girls smiled upon me, mammas were not unkind, and "lucky fellow that Ethridge "was a comment frequently on the lips of my companions. And yet, in spite of all this, how empty life seemed to that lucky Ethridge himself! As a boy, always given rather to dreams, speculations, and ideas, how fair that same life looked to me; in my cold, hard, chaste youth of study and work, how much there had seemed to be done in it, to be gained, to be enjoyed! When my work is done! I had so often thought, and now, behold! my work was done, and I was free to do, to have, to gain, and to enjoy, and suddenly there seemed nothing particular in it all. No such wonderful joy to be enjoyed, and no such marvelous thing to be gained. This arena, that had looked so fair and dazzling while I was still shut behind its gates, seemed rather circumscribed and empty now that I was actually inside, and I, as it were, seemed merely walking aimlessly about in it and kicking up the sand which was to have been the witness of such great