Robert Ainsleigh A Novel Author:Mary Elizabeth Braddon General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1891 Original Publisher: Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent Subjects: Fiction / General Fiction / Classics Fiction / Literary Literary Criticism / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrat... more »ions 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 select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: " This event happened,-l, y a strange coincidence, within four- and-twenty hours after the sudden death of Lady Barbara Lestrange, to whom the mansion and estate of Hauteville belonged in her own right, and from whom this noble property devolves to her husband and sole heir, Sir Marcus Lestrange, the lamented lady having died intestate." "A strange coincidence," I repeated, brooding over this passage in the report. " Was this midnight attack upon my lady's priyate room no more than a coincidence ? I have heard her say that she kept family papers in that very cabinet; and before she is cold in her coffin tnat cabinet is broken open by masked ruffians, who go near to murder her most faithful servant and my only friend. And my benefactress dies intestate, without care or thought for the orphan youth she had adopted; she, whose carefulness for others revealed itself in the smallest things. O God! it is a strange and wicked world; and I know not whether the treachery of Mahometan revolutionaries in this Eastern hemisphere is much darker than the plots and stratagems of so-called Christians at home! " CHAPTER XVIIL THE BOLT ABOUT TO FALL. Were this a record of private griefs, I might dwell long upon the desolation of spirit and unutterable anguish of heart which followed the receipt of those tidings that gave the death-blow to all my hopes; and, Heaven knows, these had seemed faint and feeble enough since my cruel marria...« less