Valetta Author:Cross 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 II. Upon a certain fine autumn night, the moon was shining over the sea, whose silver line glistened far away in the distance. It wa$ lighting up the ... more »brown track of the marsh, and throwing its clear, cold shadows among the fantastic gables of the little old town. It was a night for the Troiluses of Benchurch to sigh forth their souls upon the old ramparts ; for the Didos to wander " by the wild sea banks." It was a nightwhich was about to be illustrated as such a night deserved. At an early hour, the rattling to and fro of flys, glass coaches, and covered vans, through the old twisting streets, announced that some one in the town was awake, and inclined to make the most of that unusual occurrence. Inquiry was aroused, and it soon became generally known, that upon that night Miss G-rantham was about to give her annual party; a festival remarkable as being the only occasion on which the great Squire Hardyman condescended to appear in society. " If," said Napoleon, when at the height of his power, " if I were to appear six nights running in my box at the opera, these people would be tired of me." Perhaps our Napoleon of the furrow was of the same way of thinking. More probably, he thought or cared nothing about these good folks, which is even a still better recipe for keeping up one's prestige. But who was this Miss Grantham—this Medcea, who could thus " renew old son?" We must say a few words concerning her. There is a class of ladies in this land, where ladies are happily paramount, of which one or more specimens may be found in almost every town of the kingdom. They are neither young nor old, rich nor poor. They are neither entirely benevolent, nor utterly malicious in their propensities. They have their mild antipathies, and their aversions which smou...« less