Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

ΤΟ

THE COUNTESS OF CARNARVON.

MY DEAR LADY CARNARVON,

In availing myself of your kind permission to dedicate my little book to you, I cannot but express my regret that it should not be more worthy of such a distinction. Yet I venture to hope that, although in point of composition my work may be of the humblest, there is in the story neither principle nor expression which need make me unwilling to ask for it the sanction of a name which I have so much reason to regard with the most sincere and affectionate respect. I will, therefore, only conclude by thanking you for thus adding to the many favours you have already conferred on

Your gratefully attached,

A. E.

April 15th, 1858.

43 X 856 *

>

MINNA RAYMOND.

CHAPTER I.

AN ALTERNATIVE.

Where there's a will there's a way.

MINNA RAYMOND was the daughter of a gentleman of good family, who, however, was so poor as to be almost unable to maintain the position to which his birth entitled him. The younger son of a younger son, it was only by success in a profession that Mr. Raymond could hope to attain to affluent, or even easy circumstances; but his career had not been a successful one. Having entered the church early in life, in compliance with his father's earnest wishes, he resigned the ministerial office at the age of thirty, in consequence of scruples of conscience, which, while they allowed him still to consider himself a member of the Church of England, made him prefer a private position in the ranks of that Church. He had been married a year before coming to this decision, by which all his earthly prospects were blighted, and had since tried various employments which his friends had with much difficulty obtained for him, but several of which he had been obliged to resign from ill health; and the appointment which he now held was scarcely of suffi

B

« AnteriorContinuar »