The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Pit Town Coronet, Volume III (of 3), by Charles James Wills

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Title: The Pit Town Coronet, Volume III (of 3)

A Family Mystery.

Author: Charles James Wills

Release Date: February 23, 2013 [eBook #42169]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PIT TOWN CORONET, VOLUME III (OF 3)***

E-text prepared by Robert Cicconetti, Sue Fleming,
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
(http://www.pgdp.net)
from page images generously made available by
Internet Archive/American Libraries
(http://archive.org/details/americana)

THE
PIT TOWN CORONET:
A Family Mystery.

BY
CHARLES J. WILLS,

AUTHOR OF

IN THE LAND OF THE LION AND SUN, ETC.

IN THREE VOLUMES.
VOL. III.

WARD AND DOWNEY,
12, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN, LONDON, W.C.
1888

[The right of translation is reserved, and the Dramatic Copyright protected.]

PRINTED BY
KELLY AND CO., GATE STREET, LINCOLN'S INN FIELDS, W.C.;
AND MIDDLE MILL, KINGSTON-ON-THAMES.

CONTENTS.

THE PIT TOWN CORONET.

CHAPTER I.

AFTER SEVENTEEN YEARS.

Seventeen uneventful years had passed and had streaked Georgie Haggard's abundant chestnut locks with grey. A lovely woman still. The innocent, healthful, girlish beauty had developed into the sweet matronly dignity which is so frequently seen among the happy wives and mothers of the English aristocracy. Haggard was still proud of his wife, because even he couldn't fail to see her beauty; and as for the old lord, he idolized her much as old Squire Warrender had idolized her twenty years ago at The Warren. Georgie Haggard was not demonstrative. Always quiet, she was rather timid and subdued in her husband's presence; but with the old lord, though perhaps a little more staid and dignified than of yore, she was still the lovely and affectionate woman of the old happy times. Hers was the beauty of the happy mother, the sweet matronly loveliness which is perhaps the more touching when tinged by the slight dash of sadness which idealises it and saves it from the commonplace. The smile was not ever present, but it was none the less beautiful and touching from its rarity.

Reginald Haggard and his family had been installed at Walls End Castle ever since Lord Hetton's death. They had come originally upon a visit; Mrs. Haggard's health had suddenly broken down, and at the old lord's urgent entreaty the visit had been indefinitely prolonged. Although Haggard was, as we know, a wealthy man, he could not afford to disregard any suggestion of his great-uncle. At first he had looked on the whole thing as a confounded nuisance; he had objected to his wife that they might make themselves ridiculous by a too abject obedience to the whims of the old nobleman.

But after all it was not so very bad for the Haggards. Lord Pit Town took care to make it very apparent to everybody that it was at his special desire that Haggard and his family remained at the Castle. He let it be very plainly perceived that he considered Reginald Haggard almost as his son, as well as his heir; for the permanent under-secretary at the Home Office, at the conclusion of his official duties, had