The time was full June.
V
The string of episodes which discovered before the autumn was over the
heart of Mr. Cyrus Worthington at her feet hardly deserves record in her
history but for the fillip which it gave to her spirits. Tribute is
tribute, and Mr. Worthington was a warrantable gentleman. The tarnish she
had discerned upon her armour, the foxmarks upon her fair page, dispersed
under his ardent breath; she realised herself desirable and loveworthy;
she arose from the thicket in which she cowered with the light of triumph
prophetic in her eyes, the flush of victory after victory prophetic in her
cheeks. Therefore Mr. Worthington's career in the Charles Street lists
shall be chronicled.
He was a portly widower, a banker, a father, who made his bow to Lady
Maria some three times a year when he dined in Charles Street. In return,
he received her ladyship once during a summer at his mansion of Fallowlea,
Walton-on-Thames. On such occasions the Misses Worthington and their
cousins, the Pascoe girls, who lived at Esher, would enact a pastoral play
in the shrubberies with various entangled curates, with young Sam
Worthington from Oxford and friends of his. Mr.
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