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Strange Story, a — Volume 03 by Baron Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton
page 18 of 75 (24%)
of your engagement to Lilian Ashleigh. I never promised to conceal it; on
the contrary, I wrote word to Anne Ashleigh that I would therein act as my
own judgment counselled me. I think my words to you were that 'public
gossip was sometimes the best security for the completion of private
engagements.'"

"Do you mean that Mrs. or Miss Ashleigh recoils from the engagement with
me, and that I should meanly compel them both to fulfil it by calling in
the public to censure them--if--if--Oh, madam, this is worldly artifice
indeed!"

"Be good enough to listen to me quietly. I have never yet showed you the
letter to Mrs. Ashleigh, written by Lady Haughton, and delivered by Mr.
Vigors. That letter I will now show to you; but before doing so I must
enter into a preliminary explanation. Lady Haughton is one of those women
who love power, and cannot obtain it except through wealth and
station,--by her own intellect never obtain it. When her husband died she
was reduced from an income of twelve thousand a year to a jointure of
twelve hundred, but with the exclusive guardianship of a young son, a
minor, and adequate allowances for the charge; she continued, therefore,
to preside as mistress over the establishments in town and country; still
had the administration of her son's wealth and rank. She stinted his
education, in order to maintain her ascendancy over him. He became a
brainless prodigal, spendthrift alike of health and fortune. Alarmed, she
saw that, probably, he would die young and a beggar; his only hope of
reform was in marriage. She reluctantly resolved to marry him to a
penniless, well-born, soft-minded young lady whom she knew she could
control; just before this marriage was to take place he was killed by a
fall from his horse. The Haughton estate passed to his cousin, the
luckiest young man alive,--the same Ashleigh Sumner who had already
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