The Golden Calf

The Golden Calf

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Title: The Golden Calf
Author: M. E. Braddon
Release Date: October, 2005 [EBook #9052] [Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on September 1, 2003]
Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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THE GOLDEN CALF
A Novel BY M.E. BRADDON
AUTHOR OF
'LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET,' 'AURORA FLOYD,' 'VIXEN,' 'ISHMAEL,' ETC., ETC.

[Illustration: "Ida stood with clasped hands, and lips moving dumbly in prayer."]

CONTENTS
CHAP.
I. THE ARTICLED PUPIL
II. 'I AM GOING TO MARRY FOR MONEY'
III. AT THE KNOLL
IV. WENDOVER ABBEY
V. DR. RYLANCE ASSERTS HIMSELF
VI. A BIRTHDAY FEAST
VII. IN THE RIVER-MEADOW
VIII. AT THE LOCK-HOUSE
IX. A SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT
X. A BAD PENNY
XI. ACCOMPLISHMENTS AT A DISCOUNT
XII. THE SWORD OF DAMOCLES
XIII. KINGTHORPE SOCIETY
XIV. THE TRUE KNIGHT
XV. MR. WENDOVER PLANS AN EXCURSION
XVI. THICKER THAN WATER
XVII. OUGHT SHE TO STAY?
XVIII. AFTER A STORM COMES A CALM
XIX. AFTER A CALM A STORM
XX. WAS THIS THE MOTIVE?
XXI. TAKING LIFE QUIETLY
XXII. LADY PALLISER STUDIES THE UPPER TEN
XXIII. 'ALL OUR LIFE is MIXED WITH DEATH'
XXIV. 'FRUITS FAIL AND LOVE DIES AND TIME RANGES'
XXV. 'MY SEED WAS YOUTH, MY CROP WAS ENDLESS CARE'
XXVI. 'AND, IF I DIE, NO SOUL WILL PITY ME'
XXVII. JOHN JARDINE SOLVES THE MYSTERY
XXVIII. AN ENGLISHMAN'S HOUSE IS HIS CASTLE
XXIX. 'AS ONE DEAD IN THE BOTTOM OF A TOMB'
XXX. A FIERY DAWN
XXXI. 'SOLE PARTNER AND SOLE PART OF ALL THESE JOYS'

THE GOLDEN CALF

CHAPTER I.
THE ARTICLED PUPIL.
'Where is Miss Palliser?' inquired Miss Pew, in that awful voice of hers, at which the class-room trembled, as at unexpected thunder. A murmur ran along the desks, from girl to girl, and then some one, near that end of the long room which was sacred to Miss Pew and her lieutenants, said that Miss Palliser was not in the class-room.
'I think she is taking her music lesson, ma'am,' faltered the girl who had ventured diffidently to impart this information to the schoolmistress.
'Think?' exclaimed Miss Pew, in her stentorian voice. 'How can you think about an absolute fact? Either she is taking her lesson, or she is not taking her lesson. There is no room for thought. Let Miss Palliser be sent for this moment.'
At this command, as at the behest of the Homeric Jove himself, half a dozen Irises started up to carry the ruler's message; but again Miss Pew's mighty tones resounded in the echoing class-room.
'I don't want twenty girls to carry one message. Let Miss Rylance go.'
There was a grim smile on the principal's coarsely-featured countenance as she gave this order. Miss Rylance was not one of the six who had started up to do the schoolmistress's bidding. She was a young lady who considered her mission in life anything rather than to carry a message--a young lady who thought herself quite the most refined and elegant thing at Mauleverer Manor, and so entirely superior to her surroundings as to be absolved from the necessity of being obliging. But Miss Pew's voice, when fortified by anger, was too much even for Miss Rylance's calm sense of her own merits, and she rose at the lady's bidding, laid down her ivory penholder on the neatly written exercise, and walked out of the room quietly, with the slow and stately deportment imparted by a long course of instruction from Madame Rigolette, the fashionable dancing-mistress.
'Rylance won't much like being sent on a message,' whispered Miss Cobb, the Kentish brewer's daughter, to Miss Mullins, the Northampton carriage-builder's heiress.
'And old Pew delights in taking her down a peg,' said Miss Cobb, who was short, plump, and ruddy, a picture of rude health and unrefined good looks--a girl who bore 'beer' written in unmistakable characters across her forehead, Miss Rylance had observed to her own particular circle. 'I will say that for the old lady,' added Miss Cobb, 'she never cottons to stuckupishness.'
Vulgarity of speech is the peculiar delight of a schoolgirl off duty. She spends so much