The Ward Author:Frances Milton Trollope General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1857 Original Publisher: G. Routledge 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: Moreover, he had a title which, though not perhaps the highest she could command, would suffice to make her " my lady;" and lastly, he was the master of Temple, a place which she had been told that summer travellers often came miles to see. It is true that Miss Martin Thorpe did not believe Sir Charles Temple was in love with her; on the contrary, she was fully aware that ne disliked her very much; but this did not in the least degree shake either her inclination or her determination to be Lady Temple, of Temple and Thorpe-Combe. She had faith unbounded in the power of wealth and in the power of will; and no beauteous girl, retiring to her room, blushing and tearful, from the Grst avowal of a favoured lover's hopes, ever looked forward to the union that would follow, with more confidence than the little ugly Sophia now did to that by which, in the fulness of time, she meant to bestow herself and her acres upon her unconscious and uncourteous guardian. CHAPTER XV. No important difficulties remained to impede the final arrangement of the plan of life which Miss Martin Thorpe had thus laid down for herself; and in the course of the evening which followed the above conversation, she gently contrived to intimate to Sir Charles Temple, that as soon as he should have done what he had given her reason to hope he would do, respecting settling some plan for her cousin Algernon, she should wish immediately to remove with the family to Thorpe-Combe. " There can be no occasion whatever that it should be delayed, Miss Martin Thorpe," replied the young man. " I have already sounde...« less