My Little Lady

My Little Lady

The Project Gutenberg EBook of My Little Lady, by Eleanor Frances
Poynter 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
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Title: My Little Lady
Author: Eleanor Frances Poynter
Release Date: October 2, 2005 [EBook #16788]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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LITTLE LADY ***

Produced by Daniel Fromont

Eleanor Frances Poynter is the author of My little lady (1871 novel),
Ersilia (1876 novel), Among the hills (1881 novel), Madame de Presnel
(1885 novel), The wooing of Catherine and other tales (1886), The
failure of Elisabeth (1890 novel), An exquisite fool (1892 novel),
Michael Ferrier (1902 novel); and translator of Wilhelmine von
Hillern's The vulture maiden (Die Geier-Wally) (1876) and Agnès
Mary Duclaux (later Mrs James Darmesteter)'s Froissart (1895).

Two of her novels were translated in French: My little lady as
Madeleine Linders (1873); and Among the hills as Hetty (1883).
The Saturday Review vol. XXX p. 794 comments My little lady as
follows: "There are certain female characters in novels which remind
one of nothing so much as of a head of Greuze,--fresh, simple, yet of
the cunningly simple type, 'innocent--arch,' and intensely natural.... 'My
Little Lady' is a character of this Greuze-like kind.... The whole book is
charming; quietly told, quietly thought, without glare or flutter, and
interesting in both character and story,... and, if slight of kind,
thoroughly good of its kind."

COLLECTION
OF
BRITISH AUTHORS
TAUCHNITZ EDITION.
VOL. 1148.

MY LITTLE LADY.
IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. I.

Thy sinless progress, through a world By sorrow darken'd and by care
disturbed, Apt likeness bears to hers through gather'd clouds Moving
untouch'd in silver purity.
WORDSWORTH.

MY LITTLE LADY.

COPYRIGHT EDITION.

IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. I.

LEIPZIG
BERNHARD TAUCHNITZ
1871.
The Right of Translation is reserved.

To
J.C.I.


PART I.

MY LITTLE LADY.
CHAPTER I.

In the Garden.
There are certain days in the lives of each one of us, which come in
their due course without special warning, to which we look forward
with no anticipations of peculiar joy or sorrow, from which beforehand
we neither demand nor expect more than the ordinary portion of good
and evil, and which yet through some occurrence--unconsidered
perhaps at the moment, but gaining in significance with years and
connecting events--are destined to live apart in our memories to the end
of our existence. Such a day in Horace Graham's life was a certain hot
Sunday in August, that he spent at the big hotel at Chaudfontaine.
Every traveller along the great high road leading from Brussels to
Cologne knows Chaudfontaine, the little village distant about six miles
from Liége, with its church, its big hotel, and its scattered cottages,
partly forges, partly restaurants, which shine white against a dark green
background of wooded hills, and gleam reflected in the clear tranquil
stream by which they stand. On every side the hills seem to fold over
and enclose the quiet green valley; the stream winds and turns, the long
poplar-bordered road follows its course; amongst the hills are more
valleys, more streams, woods, forests, sheltered nooks, tall grey
limestone rocks, spaces of cornfields, and bright meadows. Everyone
admires the charming scenery as the train speeds across it, through one
tunnel after another; but there are few amongst our countrymen who
care to give it more than a passing glance of admiration, or to tarry in
the quiet little village even for an hour, in their great annual rush to Spa,
or the Rhine, or Switzerland. As a rule one seldom meets Englishmen
at Chaudfontaine, and it was quite by chance that Horace Graham
found himself there. An accident to a goods train had caused a
detention of several hours all along the line, as he was travelling to
Brussels, and it was by the advice of a Belgian fellow-passenger that he
had stopped at Chaudfontaine, instead of going on to Liége, as he had
at first proposed doing, on hearing from the guard that it was the
furthest point that could be reached that night.
Behind the hotel lies a sunshiny shady garden, with benches and tables
set under the trees near the house, and beyond, an unkempt lawn, a sort

of wilderness of grass and shrubs and trees, with clumps of dark and
light foliage against the more uniform green of the surrounding hills,
and it was still cool and pleasant when Graham wandered into it after
breakfast on that Sunday morning, whilst all in front of the hotel was
already basking in the hot