A Novel. BY WILKIE COLLINS. "May I not write in such a style as this? My end, thy good? Why may it not be done? Dark clouds bring waters, when the bright bring none." JOHN BUNYAN's Apology for his Book. F. S. ELLIS, 33, KING STREET, COVENT GARDEN. 1870. [The Right of Translation is Reserved; and the Right of Dramatic Adaptation has been secured by the Author.] HE scene opens on a bedroom-and discloses, in broad daylight, a lady in bed. Persons with an irritable sense of propriety, whose self-appointed duty it is to be always crying out, are warned to pause before they cry out on this occasion. The lady now presented to view being no less a person than Lady Lundie herself, it follows, as a matter of course, that the utmost demands of propriety are, by the mere assertion of that fact, abundantly and indisputably satisfied. To say that anything short of direct moral advantage could, by any possibility, accrue to any living creature by the presentation of her ladyship in a horizontal, instead of a perpendicular position, is to VOL. III. 1 |