AUTHOR OF "THE MYSTERIES OF HERON DYKE" ETC.
Books you may hold readily in your hand are the most useful, after all
Dr. JOHNSON
NEW YORK
HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS
1885
CONTENTS | |
| CHAP. | |
| [I.] | SHABBY-GENTEEL. |
| [II.] | AT THE BROWN BEAR. |
| [III.] | NEGOTIATIONS. |
| [IV.] | TERMS PROPOSED. |
| [V.] | TERMS ACCEPTED. |
| [VI.] | MILD LUNACY. |
| [VII.] | "SWEET COZ." |
| [VIII.] | "GOOD-BYE." |
| [IX.] | TRANSFORMATION. |
| [X.] | INFATUATION. |
| [XI.] | CONFIDENTIAL. |
| [XII.] | CECILIA AND THE COUNTESS. |
| [XIII.] | "YOUNG PILLBOX." |
| [XIV.] | "TWELVE IT IS." |
| [XV.] | CECILIA PHILOSOPHIZES. |
| [XVI.] | PALLIDA MORS. |
| [XVII.] | GOLDEN DREAMS. |
| [XVIII.] | UP A LADDER. |
| [XIX.] | P. P. C. |
A BARREN TITLE.
[CHAPTER I.]
SHABBY-GENTEEL.
It was a sunny February afternoon when Mr. John Fildew put his nose--aquiline and slightly purple as to its ridge--outside the door of his lodgings for the first time that day, and remarked to himself, with a shiver, that the weather was "beastly cold." After gazing up the street and down the street, and seeing nothing worth looking at, he shut the door behind him and strolled leisurely away.
Hayfield Street, in which Mr. Fildew's lodgings were situate, was, despite its name, as far removed, both in appearance and associations, from anything suggestive of country or rural life as it well could be. It was of the town towny. Every house in it--and they were substantial, well-built domiciles, dating back some seventy or more years ago--was let out to three or four families, while in many cases the ground-floors had been converted into shops, in one or other of which anything might be bought, from a second-hand silk dress or sealskin jacket to a pennyworth of fried fish or a succulent cow-heel.