Author Description

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. 1893 edition. Excerpt:...a long time from that source of all that was delightful in her. Colonel Kingsward had felt with a delighted surprise that the child and the mother did "throw up" each other when he began to go out with them together, Bee's young beauty showing what mamma's had been, and Mrs. Kingsward's beauty (so much higher and sweeter than any girl's wild-rose bloom could be) showing what in the after days her child would grow to. To cut these two asunder for a stranger--another man, an intruding personality thrusting himself between the child and her natural allegiance--was oppressive in any shape. At the first word, indeed, and in the amusement furnished him by the letters that had been poured upon him, Colonel Kingsward's consent had been given almost without thought. Aubrey Leigh was a good match, he had a fine place, a valuable estate, and was well spoken of-among men. If Lucy was so absurd as to wish her daughter to marry; if Bee, the silly child, was so foolish as to think of leaving her father's house for another, that was probably as good a one as she could have chosen. I don't know if fathers generally feel it a sort of desecration when their young daughters marry. Some fathers do, and some brothers, as if the creature pure by nature from all such thoughts were descending to a lower place, and becoming such an one as themselves. Colonel Kingsward was not, perhaps, visionary enough for such a view, yet he was slightly shocked in his sentiment about the perfection of his own house by this idea on his child's part of leaving it for another. However, it was true he had a very large family, and to provide so well for one of them at the very outset of her career was a thing which was not...