CONTENTS.


CHAPTER PAGE

I. HOW GEORGE NESTON JUMPED 1

II. WHY GEORGE NESTON JUMPED 15

III. "WHAT ARE QUARTER SESSIONS?" 26

IV. A SERPENT IN EDEN 38

V. THE FIRST PARAGRAPH--AND OTHERS 52

VI. A SUCCESSFUL ORDEAL 65

VII. AN IMPOSSIBLE BARGAIN 82

VIII. THE FRACAS AT MRS. POCKLINGTON'S 95

IX. GERALD NESTON SATISFIES HIMSELF 109

X. REMINISCENCES OF A NOBLEMAN 122

XI. PRESENTING AN HONEST WOMAN 136

XII. NOT BEFORE THOSE GIRLS! 150

XIII. CONTAINING MORE THAN ONE ULTIMATIUM 162

XIV. NEAERA'S LAST CARD 172

XV. A LETTER FOR MR. GERALD 183

XVI. THERE IS AN EXPLOSION 197

XVII. LAURA DIFFERS 208

XVIII. GEORGE NEARLY GOES TO BRIGHTON 219

XIX. SOME ONE TO SPEAK TO 227

XX. FATE'S INSTRUMENTS 237




MR. WITT'S WIDOW.




CHAPTER I.

HOW GEORGE NESTON JUMPED.


The Nestons, of Tottlebury Grange in the county of Suffolk, were an
ancient and honourable family, never very distinguished or very rich,
but yet for many generations back always richer and more distinguished
than the common run of mankind. The men had been for the most part able
and upright, tenacious of their claims, and mindful of their duties; the
women had respected their betters, exacted respect from their inferiors,
and educated their brothers' wives in the Neston ways; and the whole
race, while confessing individual frailties, would have been puzzled to
point out how, as a family, it had failed to live up to the position in
which Providence and the Constitution had placed it. The error, if any,
had indeed been on the other side in one or two cases. The last owner
of the Grange, a gay old bachelor, had scorned the limits of his rents
and his banking-account, and added victories on the turf to the family
laurels at a heavy cost to the family revenues. His sudden death had
been mourned as a personal loss, but silently acknowledged as a dynastic
gain, and ten years of the methodical rule of his brother Roger had gone
far to efface the ravages of his merry reign. The younger sons of the
Nestons served the State or adorned the professions, and Roger had spent
a long and useful life in the Office of Commerce. He had been a valuable
official, and his merits had not gone unappreciated. Fame he had neither
sought nor attained, and his name had come but little before the public,
its rare appearances in the newspapers generally occurring on days when
our Gracious Sovereign completed another year of her beneficent life,
and was pleased to mark the occasion by conferring honour on Mr. Roger
Neston. When this happened, all the leader-writers looked him up in "Men
of the Time," or "Whitaker," or some other standard work of reference,
and remarked that few appointments would meet with more universal public
approval, a proposition which the public must be taken to have endorsed
with tacit unanimity.

Mr. Neston went on his way, undisturbed by his moments of notoriety,
but quietly pleased with his red ribbon, and, when he entered into
possession of the family estate, continued to go to the office with
unabated regularity. At last he reached the pinnacle of his particular
ambition, and, as Permanent Head of his Department, for fifteen years
took a large share in the government of a people almost unconscious of
his existence, until the moment when it saw the announcement that on his
retirement he had been raised to the peerage by the title of Baron
Tottlebury. Then the chorus of approval broke forth once again, and the
new lord had many friendly pats on the back he was turning to public
life. Henceforth he sat silent in the House of Lords, and wrote letters
to the _Times_ on subjects which the cares of office had not previously
left him leisure to study.

But fortune was not yet tired of smiling on the Nestons. Lord
Tottlebury, before accepting his new dignity, had impressed upon his
son Gerald the necessity of seeking the wherewith to gild the coronet
by a judicious marriage. Gerald was by no means loth. He had never made
much progress at the Bar, and felt that his want of success contrasted
unfavourably with the growing practice of his cousin George, a state of
things very unfitting, as George represented a younger branch than
Gerald.