Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1912 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER VIII IN the spring of that same year there was food for gossip, sufficient to last them many a long day in Eckington. In one of those wild moments of madness which may overtake the gentlest of women, Mrs. Leggatt, wife of the schoolmaster, bought her own sorrow. There lived in the house with them a young man named Allen, the organist at Pershore, teaching music in Mr. Leggatt's school. For many weeks, it transpired, Mr. Leggatt had felt suspicious. From doubt, ungenerously he let it grow into conviction, and all with that secretive silence of a man who waits the proper moment for revenge. It never occurred to him to save that gentle wife of his from the abyss on whose very verge she stood. It never entered his head to protect Wilfrid and Dorothy from their mother's folly. It was enough for him that the wretched woman had allowed the tide to catch her so far. To him all shame was then complete. He needed only the moment to trap them in their sin, and for that moment waited with eyes that smiled benignly upon all they did, yet watched with an alertness only men of cunning can possess. Unconsciously, no doubt, he contributed toward her downfall, omitting those little attentions--the few, slight thoughts of her which are more than straws to a woman caught in such a tide as this-- omitting them intentionally, and smiling, always smiling, when the young man did them in his stead. With conviction growing stronger every day, at last he moved his room from hers, and for long hours into the night stood listening at his own door. For a week he heard nothing, yet still the miserable man was convinced. "I have to go away," he said one morning at breakfast. "I have to go up to London," and with a bitter exultation in his heart he saw the...
