Читать книгу Charles Peace, or The Adventures of a Notorious Burglar онлайн

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Whatever they knew or had heard about her they had the prudence to keep to themselves.

The years flew by and the Honourable Miss Ethalwood was approaching her eighteenth summer, and her father was looking forward to the time when she would be presented at Court and take her place among the ladies of the fashionable world.

He almost dreaded this ordeal, for he felt that she would, as a natural consequence, become hurried on into a vortex of pleasure, and be constrained to keep up an incessant round of visits; but a greater evil, a more serious estrangement, was destined to take place before the dreaded time arrived.

When his lordship took up his quarters in his town residence he left his daughter at the old ancestral home, where, during his absence, she reigned supreme. This just suited her, for, like her father, she was immensely fond of having her own way.

With all his intellect and acquirements, how blind was the haughty nobleman to the common affairs of life—​how little did he reckon upon the danger which beset his daughter’s path at this time!