Only a Clod in Three Vols Author:Mary Elizabeth Braddon General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1865 Original Publisher: John Maxwell Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can se... more »lect from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: CHAPTER IV. HARCOURT GATHERS HIS FIRST-FRUITS. The party in Mrs. Tredethlyn's opera-box that evening was a very pleasant one. Whatever business had taken Harcourt Lowther to Richmond must have been tolerably satisfactory in its result, for that gentleman's spirits were gayer than usual as he stood behind Maude's chair in the shadow of the crimson curtain, talking to her under cover of all those crashing choruses and grand orchestral effects which Meyerbeer must surely have composed with a view to comfortable conversation. Miss Grunderson was gorgeous in thirty-guineas worth of blue moire antique a la Watteau, and exhibited a small fortune in the way of lace and artificial flowers upon her plump little person. Her diamond earrings were the biggest in the opera-house; though it must be confessed that a straw-coloured tint, which the connoisseur repudiates, pervaded the gems that the market-gardener had bought for his daughter -- size, rather than purity of water, being the quality for which Mr. Grunderson selected his diamonds. Nothing could be more striking than the contrast between Maude's simple toilet of white silk and llosa's gaudy splendour. But Miss Grunderson was very happy this evening, for the delightful Roderick condescended to talk to her, while his brother was engrossed by Mrs. Tredethlyn. He was not very polite, but Rosa thought him positively charming. She had learnt to understand the emptiness of the attentions that had been paid to her by enterprising young bachelors, who thought that an alliance with the great Grunderson's daughter would be a very ple...« less