Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1831 edition. Excerpt: ... think on that look and his remarkable visit. "It is evident," said I, in soliloquy, "that there is some strange method in the civilities of Sir Neil. He has some purpose to promote by the manner in which he uniformly treats me. What can it be? And how has it arisen? All he knows of me is by the introduction of Miss Leezy, and yet he regards me with more than common distinction: --It must have some personal motive, for he never speaks of my business--he may not even know its nature--his attention is to myself alone!" The afternoon became damp and humid, the streets were, what the Cockneys call, greasy, and a lowering of the atmosphere, a dullness, between a fog and clouds, a muddiness of the air, rendered the evening uncomfortable. As Sir Neil expected to be late, I ordered my bachelor's dinner half an hour after the usual time, and a fire to be lighted that would be social when it broke out; but to my own surprise and the cook's displeasure, he made his appearance considerably before the anticipated hour, while the parlour was chilly, and the fire still ineffectually kindled. This incident sharpened my curiosity. We talked lightly of the topics of the day; nevertheless the preceding frame of my thoughts led me, from the pauses into which his discourse often suddenly fell, to conjecture that he had some communication to make. Nothing, however, of the kind took place; but in the course of conversation he said, in an apparently negligent manner, that he had never been at Canterbury, where some business obliged him to go in the course of a few days, and asked me, as if he did not care much whether I consented or not, to take a corner of his carriage on the following Sunday to Rochester, where he would dine and stop for the...
