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To the bitter end, by the author of 'Lady Audley's secret'.
To the bitter end by the author of 'Lady Audley's secret' Author:Mary Elizabeth Braddon Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. ' 0, DO YOU REMEMBER THE FIRST TIME I MET YOU ?' He came late on Saturday afternoon—a calm sunny afternoon, with scarcely breeze enough to sti... more »r the newly-blown roses. The place seemed all roses to Hubert Walgrave's haggard London-weary eyes : roses making a curtain for the porch; roses white and red climbing up to the very chimney-pots, entangled with creamy yellow woodbine; spreading bushes of moss-roses and cabbage-roses in the narrow garden between the high-road and the house; and through a side gate Mr. Walgrave caught a glimpse of the old-fashioned garden behind the house, all abloom with roses. ' Rather a nice place,' he murmured, in a languid semi-supercilious tone that was almost habitual to him. ' As a rule, farmhouses are ugly.' All the household—they had just finished tea in the every-day parlour — heard the stoppage of thefly; and there was a little group behind the dimity curtains peering out at the new-comer—a group in which Grace was by no means the least curious. She forgot all the degradation involved in the idea of a lodger for the moment in her eagerness to see what he was like. Jack and Charley Redmayne had gone out, at their mother's bidding, to assist in bringing in the stranger's luggage—a huge trunk, time-worn and shabby, which from its weight seemed to contain books; a large leathern portmanteau, also the worse for wear; a carpet-bag or two, three or four fishing- rods, and a shower-bath. 'Ah,' exclaimed Mrs. James, with unmitigated disgust, ' I expected he'd be a slopper!' ' He looks like a gentleman,' said Grace thoughtfully. Heaven knows where the girl had obtained her notion of a gentleman ; unless it were from the rector, a fussy little elderly man, who was always quarrelling with some one or other of his parishioners...« less