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. 1886 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER VI. "OUT OF SIGHT, BEYOND LIGHT, AT WHAT GOAL MAY WE MEET?" It was Midsummer Day, and Stella was eleven years old, an ever-memorable anniversary in that young life; so sweet in its summer dawn, so fatal before sundown. Lady Lashmar was in London, Victorian was at Oxford. He had hardly spent three months at the castle during those six years in which Stella had dwelt there, and he had exchanged scarcely a dozen words with her. He had exaggerated his mother's prejudices against the orphan, and avoided her as if she had been a toad. Lashmar and his protlgle had their little world all to themselves, save for their devoted slave, Gabriel Verner, who still hovered on the brink of publication, the manuscript of his great book still virgin, unsoiled by the finger-marks of the compositor, and who still forecast with terror the day in which the world should ring with his name, and cabinet ministers insist upon making his acquaintance. Stella's birthday had been always made in some wise a festival by her adopted father. He wanted the child to lack none of those childish pleasures which fathers and mothers give their children. She was in after years to recall no deprivation, no loss of privilege or pleasure. And this year he felt more than usually anxious to do honour to her birthday. The time was drawing near when this happy Arcadian existence, this easy-going education at her benefactor's feet must needs be changed for a more conventional form of life. The time was coming when Stella must be handed over to feminine care, in order that she might learn the ways and the accomplishments of women. It would have pleased Lashmar to have carried out his work to the end, to have seen his protlgle grow up to ripening womanhood under his care, to have...