Читать книгу The Primrose Path: A Chapter in the Annals of the Kingdom of Fife онлайн

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So that Margaret was left alone. Her mother had been the richest of all Sir Ludovic’s wives. She had been—more wonderful still—a young beauty, courted and flattered, and how it was that she passed over all her younger admirers and fixed upon a man of fifty-five, a poor old Scotch baronet, nobody could divine. But she did so, and came home with him to Earl’s-hall, and brightened it a while with her youth and her wealth, and would have done wonders for the old house. Nothing less had been intended than to rebuild the ruin, though Sir Ludovic himself discouraged this, as the house, he reminded her, must pass into other hands. But poor Lady Leslie’s fine projects came to a premature end, by means of a bad cold which she caught just after her little girl was born. She died, and the last gleam of prosperity died away with her. Margaret, it was true, was rich, and the allowance her trustees made her was no small help even now to the impoverished household; though, indeed, the trouble these trustees gave, her father thought, was more than the money was worth. They wrote to Sir Ludovic about her education till he was roused to swear at, though not to profit by, the perpetual remonstrance.