Sir Noel's Heir: A Novel

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May Agnes Fleming. Sir Noel's Heir: A Novel

CHAPTER I. SIR NOEL'S DEATH-BED

CHAPTER II. CAPT. EVERARD

CHAPTER III "LITTLE MAY."

CHAPTER IV. MRS. WEYMORE

CHAPTER V. A JOURNEY TO LONDON

CHAPTER VI. GUY

CHAPTER VII. COLONEL JOCYLN

CHAPTER VIII. LADY THETFORD'S BALL

CHAPTER IX. GUY LEGARD

CHAPTER X. ASKING IN MARRIAGE

CHAPTER XI. ON THE WEDDING EVE

CHAPTER XII. MRS. WEYMORE'S STORY

CHAPTER XIII "THERE IS MANY A SLIP."

CHAPTER XIV. PARTED

CHAPTER XV. AFTER FIVE YEARS

CHAPTER XVI. AT SORRENTO

CHAPTER XVII. AT HOME

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It was a very grand and stately ceremonial, that funeral procession from Thetford Towers. A week after that stormy December night they laid Sir Noel Thetford in the family vault, where generation after generation of his race slept their last long sleep. The gentry for miles and miles around were there, and among them came the heir-at-law, the Rev. Horace Thetford, only an obscure country curate now, but failing male heirs to Sir Noel, successor to the Thetford estate and fifteen thousand a year.

The funeral was over and everybody had gone back home – everybody but the Rev. Horace Thetford, who lingered to see the result of my lady's illness, and if she died, to take possession of his estate. It was unutterably dismal in the dark, hushed old house, with Sir Noel's ghost seeming to haunt every room – very dismal and ghastly this waiting to step into dead people's shoes. But then there was fifteen thousand a year, and the finest place in Devonshire; and the Rev. Horace would have faced a whole regiment of ghosts and lived in a vault for that.

.....

She made a sudden, passionate gesture – looked at him, then away.

"It is useless – worse than useless, folly, madness, to lift the veil from the irrevocable past. But don't you think, don't you, Lady Thetford, that you might have been equally happy if you had married me?"

.....