Milly Darrell and Other Tales

Milly Darrell and Other Tales

Project Gutenberg's Milly Darrell and Other Tales, by M. E. Braddon
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
Title: Milly Darrell and Other Tales
Author: M. E. Braddon
Release Date: February 19, 2006 [EBook #17801]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MILLY
DARRELL AND OTHER TALES ***

Produced by Daniel Fromont

Mary Elizabeth Braddon (4 October 1835 - 4 February1915), Milly
Darrel (serialised in Belgravia November 1870 - January 1871), here
taken from Milly Darrel and other stories Asher's Collection Emile
Galette Paris 1873

Produced by Daniel FROMONT

ASHER'S COLLECTION
OF
ENGLISH AUTHORS.
BRITISH AND AMERICAN.
COPYRIGHT EDITION.
VOL. 72.
MILLY DARRELL AND OTHER STORIES
BY M. E. BRADDON.
IN ONE VOLUME.
PARIS
EMILE GALETTE, 12, RUE BONAPARTE.
1873.
_This Edition
is Copyright for Foreign Circulation only_.
ASHER'S COLLECTION
OF
ENGLISH AUTHORS
BRITISH AND AMERICAN.

COPYRIGHT EDITION.
VOL. 72.
MILLY DARRELL AND OTHER TALES
BY M.E. BRADDON.
IN ONE VOLUME.
ASHER'S EDITION
BY THE SAME AUTHOR:
ROBERT AINSLEIGH -- 3 VOL.
TO THE BITTER END -- 3 VOL.
MILLY DARRELL
AND OTHER TALES.
BY
M. E. BRADDON
AUTHOR OF "LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET," "ROBERT
AINSLEIGH," ETC.
COPYRIGHT EDITION.
BERLIN
A. ASHER & CO., PUBLISHERS,
1873.
TO
DR. AND MRS. BEAMAN,

THE AUTHOR'S OLD AND VALUED FRIENDS,
THIS BOOK
IS AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED.
CONTENTS.
MILLY DARRELL -- PAGE 1
OLD RUDDERFORD HALL -- PAGE 179
THE SPLENDID STRANGER -- PAGE 235

MILLY DARRELL
CHAPTER I.
I BEGIN LIFE.
I was just nineteen years of age when I began my career as articled
pupil with the Miss Bagshots of Albury Lodge, Fendale, Yorkshire. My
father was a country curate, with a delicate wife and four children, of
whom I was the eldest; and I had known from my childhood that the
day must come in which I should have to get my own living in almost
the only vocation open to a poor gentleman's daughter. I had been fairly
educated near home, and the first opportunity that arose for placing me
out in the world had been gladly seized upon by my poor father, who
consented to pay the modest premium required by the Miss Bagshots,
in order that I might be taught the duties of a governess, and essay my
powers of tuition upon the younger pupils at Albury Lodge.
How well I remember the evening of my arrival!--a bleak dreary
evening at the close of January, made still more dismal by a drizzling
rain that had never ceased falling since I left my father's snug little
house at Briarwood in Warwickshire. I had had to change trains three
times, and to wait during a blank and miserable hour and a quarter, or

so, at small obscure stations, staring hopelessly at the advertisements
on the walls--advertisements of somebody's life-sustaining cocoa, and
somebody else's health- restoring cod-liver oil, or trying to read the big
brown-backed Bible in the cheerless little waiting-room; and trying, O
so hard, not to think of home, and all the love and happiness I had left
behind me. The journey had been altogether tiresome and fatiguing; but,
for all that, the knowledge that I was near my destination brought me
no sense of pleasure. I think I should have wished that dismal journey
prolonged indefinitely, if I could thereby have escaped the beginning of
my new life.
A lumbering omnibus conveyed me from the station to Albury Lodge,
after depositing a grim-looking elderly lady at a house on the outskirts
of the town, and a dapper-looking little man, whom I took for a
commercial traveller, at an inn in the market-place. I watched the road
with a kind of idle curiosity as the vehicle lumbered along. The town
had a cheerful prosperous air even on this wet winter night, and I saw
that there were two fine old churches, and a large modern building
which I supposed to be the town-hall.
We left the town quite behind us before we came to Albury Lodge; a
very large house on the high-road, a square red-brick house of the early
Georgian era, shut in from the road by high walls. The great
wrought-iron gates in the front had been boarded up, and Albury Lodge
was now approached by a little wooden side-door into a stone- flagged
covered passage that led to a small door at the end of the house. The
omnibus-driver deposited me at this door, with all my worldly
possessions, which at this period of my life consisted of two rather
small boxes and a japanned dressing-case, a receptacle that