THE SQUIRE'S DAUGHTER

Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons

BY ARCHIBALD MARSHALL

NEW YORK
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY
1920

Published October, 1912
by
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY

TO
ANSTEY GUTHRIE

Archibald Marshall.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I A Court Ball
CHAPTER II In the Bay of Biscay
CHAPTER III The Clintons of Kencote
CHAPTER IV Clintons Young and Old
CHAPTER V Melbury Park
CHAPTER VI A Good Long Talk
CHAPTER VII The Rector
CHAPTER VIII By the Lake
CHAPTER IX The Question of Marriage
CHAPTER X Town Versus Country
CHAPTER XI A Wedding
CHAPTER XII Food and Raiment
CHAPTER XIII Ronald Mackenzie
CHAPTER XIV The Plunge
CHAPTER XV Bloomsbury
CHAPTER XVI The Pursuit
CHAPTER XVII The Contest
CHAPTER XVIII After the Storm
CHAPTER XIX The Whole House Upset
CHAPTER XX Mrs. Clinton
CHAPTER XXI Cicely's Return
CHAPTER XXII The Life

CHRONICLES OF THE CLINTONS

CHAPTER I

A COURT BALL

"I recollect the time," said the Squire, "when two women going to a ball were a big enough load for any carriage. You may say what you like about crinolines, but I've seen some very pretty women in them in my time."

There were three people in the carriage passing slowly up the Mall in the string, with little jerks and progressions. They were the Squire himself, Mrs. Clinton, and Cicely, and they were on their way to a Court Ball.

The Squire, big, florid, his reddish beard touched with grey falling over the red and gold of his Deputy-Lieutenant's uniform, sat back comfortably beside his wife, who was dressed in pale lavender silk, with diamonds in her smooth, grey-yellow hair. She was short and rather plump. Her grey eyes, looking out on the violet of the night sky, the trees, and the crowd of hilarious onlookers who had not been invited to Buckingham Palace, had a patient and slightly wistful expression. She had not spoken since the carriage had left the quiet hotel in which they were staying for their fortnight in London.

Cicely sat on the back seat of the carriage. On such an occasion as this she might have been expected to be accorded the feminine privilege of sitting at the side of her mother, but it had not occurred to the Squire to offer it to her. She was a pretty girl, twenty-two years of age, with a fair skin and abundant brown hair. She was dressed in costly white satin, her gown simply cut. As she had stood before her glass, while her mother's maid had held for her her light evening cloak, her beautiful neck and shoulders had seemed warmly flushed by contrast with the dead pallor of the satin. She also had hardly spoken since they had driven off from their hotel, which was so quiet and private that it was hardly like an hotel, and where some of the servants had stood in the hall to see them get into their carriage, just as they might have done at home at Kencote.

It was a great occasion for Cicely. Her brothers—Dick, who was in the Grenadier Guards, and Humphrey, who was in the Foreign Office—were well enough used to the scenes of splendour offered by a London season, but Cicely had hardly ever been in London at all. She had been brought up four years before to be presented, and had been taken home again immediately. She had seen nothing of London gaieties, either then or since. Now she was to enjoy such opportunities of social intercourse as might be open to the daughter of a rich squire who had had all he wanted of town life thirty