Effie Ogilvie: the story of a young life (Complete)

E F F I E O G I L V I E.

BY MRS. OLIPHANT, AUTHOR OF “CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD,” ETC. IN TWO VOLUMES. COMPLETE GLASGOW: JAMES MACLEHOSE & SONS, Publishers to the University. LONDON: MACMILLAN AND CO. 1 8 8 6. All rights reserved.


Vol. I.
The family consisted of Effie’s father, her stepmother, her brother Eric who was in the army, and a little personage, the most important of all, the only child of the second Mrs. Ogilvie, the pet and plaything of the house. You may think it would have been more respectful and becoming to reverse this description, and present Mr. and Mrs. Ogilvie first to the notice of the reader, which we shall now proceed to do. The only excuse we can offer for the irregularity of the beginning consists in the fact that it is the nature of their proceedings in respect to the young people, and particularly to Mr. Ogilvie’s daughter Effie, which induces us to disturb the decorous veil which hangs over the doors of every respectable family, in the case of these worthy persons.
In their own lives, had we time and space to recount all that befell them, there would, no doubt, be many interesting particulars, as in the lives of most other people: but when a country gentleman has attained the age of fifty or a little more, with enough of money for his necessities, and no more ambition than can be satisfied by the regulation of the affairs of the parish, it is inevitably through the fortunes of a son or daughter that he comes within reach of the sympathies of the world. These troublesome productions, of whom we take so little thought at first, who are nothing but playthings and embellishments of our own estate for so many years, have a way of pushing us out of our commanding position as the chief actors in our own lives, setting us aside into a secondary place, and conferring upon us a quite fictitious interest as influences upon theirs. It is an impertinence of fate, it is an irony of circumstance; but still it is so. And it is, consequently, as Effie’s father, a character in which he by no means knew himself, that Mr. Ogilvie of Gilston, a gentleman as much respected as any in his county, the chief heritor in his parish, and a deputy-lieutenant, has now to be presented to the world.