Page:Lady Anne Granard 3.pdf/66

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
64
LADY ANNE GRANARD.


"If I write a book, I shall get a thousand pounds, and laugh at prisons. My work is sure to sell; the very good people you so much admire will read it with just as much avidity as the bad ones you consider my clients. The fact is, that the book will keep me out of prison, my creditors drive me into it. Can you, as a nobleman of high rank, moreover, one anxious to redeem the past, baiting for a reputation, and blest of late years with various successful nibbles, can you, even as an honest man, prevent me from effecting an honest purpose? unless——."

"Unless!" muttered Lord Rotheles to himself, "she has not paid that good neighbour poor Georgiana was so anxious about, I see, and what the countess hinted at, as to her dress, is evidently true. But the more she has, precisely the more she will spend; there is no appealing to her integrity or her feelings. I know not what to do, but something I must do. I would not have the Hales family know of her debts for the world, but how can she have any so soon? Charles Penrhyn helped her, and——."

"You are contemplative, my lord," said Lady Anne, rising, and slowly crossing the room, which she quitted.

"She is very thin, but very graceful yet, and has the most indomitable spirit in the world. I am in