Broughton

“ So far from feeling impatient at his confinement to a sofa, therefore, Broughton affected distrust in his renovated limb for a full fortnight after the doctor had pronounced him cured. At last he was able to drive out, and soon afterwards to take exercise on horseback, Lydia Delmar and her father occasionally accompanying him.
People will talk at Leamington, as they do at other places; and so the gossips said that the rich—for he was still so reputed in the world—the “rich” Sir Dudley Broughton was going to marry Miss Delmar. ”

“ Lights are twinkling from the village alehouse; the forge shines like a great dull-red jewel in the surrounding grey; laughing voices of boisterous men are wafted unseemly amongst the graves. Shuddering at the sound, she raises herself up quickly; then, stooping again, kisses yet once more the wet red earth that is now closest neighbour to her brother, and sobbing "Good-bye, my boy, good-bye!—God bless you, Jack!" ”

“ You say you have been a convict, and I know you are now a gambler and the associate of gamblers; yet acknowledge me as your daughter and I will be your slave. I can bear anything but——”
Broughton at this moment checked the speaker by a gesture so fierce and determined that she shrank from him in actual fear.
“Cease, girl, and never dare to mention the word convict again in my presence. What you ask of me is impossible for me to grant. Come with me to my [293] home. Let the world say of you what it will, you will at least be secure from want. ”

“ The day rolls past, dustily, samely, wearily. There have been flying thunder-storms—lightning-flashes past the windows. I hide my face in my dusty gloves to avoid seeing the quick red forks, and leave a smear on each grimy cheek. Every moment, I am a rape-field—a corn-field, a bean-field, farther from Barbara, farther from the Brat, farther from the jackdaw.
"This is rather a long day for you, child!" says Sir Roger, kindly, perceiving, I suppose, the joviality of the expression with which I am eying the German landscape. ”

“ Like every other lawyer, Broughton was desirous to have him for a client, and proceeded to explain the nature of his cause. Having spent the night at the inn, they proceeded next morning on their journey, when the Farmer addressed the counsellor, saying, “Pray, sir, what is meant by trover and conversion in the law of England?” He replied, that it signified, in our common law, an action which one man has against another, who, having found any of his goods, refuses to deliver them up on demand, and perhaps converts them to his own use. ”

“ If one bad leak will cause a shipwreck, how is the craft to mount the waves with every plank riven asunder?
If among the patriarchs who lend at usury, Broughton's credit was beginning to ebb, in the clubs at the West End, in the betting-ring, at Crockford's, and at Tattersall's, he was in all the splendor of his former fame. Anderson would trust him with half his stable. Howell and James would send him the epergne they had designed for a czar. And so he lived. With rocks and breakers ahead, he only “carried on” the faster and the freer. ”

“ The Russian noble was a stranger to the turf. In the details of arranging the approaching race, in apportioning the weights and ages and distances, Broughton passed his whole mornings for a month, sorely puzzled at times by the apathy of his Northern friend, who actually never obtruded an opinion, or expressed a wish for information on the subject.
Sir Dudley's book was a very heavy one too. What “he stood to win” was a profound secret; but knowing men said that if he lost, it would be such a “squeeze” as had not been known at Newmarket since the Duke of York's day. ”

“ The fidelity therefore of Sir Thomas Broughton's tenants to their fallen master was not without its dangers, and is a pleasing instance of attachment to the person of a leader in a rude and perilous age.
In the wars of the Roses the Broughtons had always strenuously supported the House of York. It is however remarkable that, the manor of Witherslack having been granted to Sir Thomas by Henry the Seventh in the first year of his reign, he should have joined the Pretender in arms against that monarch in the following year. ”

“ Over sea and land he followed him; the thirst for vengeance stimulating a heart dead to every other emotion. Accident, when I was a mere boy, brought me into close relation with poor Broughton.”
“With whom?” said she, grasping my wrist, while her eyes strained till the very blood started in them.
“Sir Dudley Broughton,” said I; but the words were not out ere she fell senseless on the floor. I raised her, and placed her on a sofa; and then, dipping her handkerchief in the fountain, bathed her temples and her lips. But she gave no sign of returning animation ”

“ A correspondent of the Psychical Research Society writes that whilst staying with her mother's cousin, Mrs. Elizabeth Broughton, wife of Mr. Edward Broughton, Edinburgh, and daughter of the late Colonel Blanckley, in the year 1844, she told her the following strange story:—
"She awoke one night and aroused her husband, telling him that something dreadful had happened in France. He begged her to go to sleep again and not to trouble him. ”

“ She darts noiselessly to the window, and, pulling aside a bit of the curtain, casts a glance backwards towards the bed—a glance that can hardly travel, for the weight of the hope it carries. Whatever she may be, her senses are not mad; nor have they told her a lie. Rupert is feebly stirring, and his eyes are open. ”

“ Broughton."
"She is a beautiful woman," Lyon conceded, somewhat coldly. Secretly he thought Kittie might have been as well off without that intimacy. But before he left the subject there was one point on which he wanted to get light, if possible, without betraying the point of his interest,--Mrs. Broughton's possible acquaintance with the loose panel in the protecting wall of the school yard.
"Do you know if Mrs. Broughton has been here before?" he asked.
"Oh, yes. She always stops here when she comes to Waynscott. She was one of Miss Elliott's first pupils." ”

“ There is nothing wooden about any of Miss Broughton's novels; and in these days so many novels are wooden! But they are not sweet-savoured as are those by Miss Thackeray, and are, therefore, less true to nature. In Miss Broughton's determination not to be mawkish and missish, she has made her ladies do and say things which ladies would not do and say. They throw themselves at men's heads, and when they are not accepted only think how they may throw themselves again. Miss Broughton is still so young that I hope she may live to overcome her fault in this direction. ”

“ In 1592 we find Broughton again in Germany, and, according to Lightfoot, he probably remained abroad till the death of Elizabeth. But Brook prints (from Baker's copy, Harl. MS. 7031, p. 94) a letter from Broughton to Lord Burghley, dated 'London, May 16, 1595,' in which he applies for the archbishopric of Tomon (Tuam) , 'worth not above 200l.,' and asks for a meeting to be arranged between him and Rainolds. On the continent he made the acquaintance of many learned men, including Scaliger, who calls him 'furiosus et maledicus.' It is said that he was tempted with the offer of a cardinal's hat ”

“ About 2 mile from Broughton is a great old house much like Broughton; its Sr Robert Dashwoods—most of the great houses there about are old built. About three mile off at Adderbery wch is a pretty neate vilage, there are two or three good houses one of Sr Thomas Cobbs and Lady Rochesters looks neate and well with good gardens. ”

“ There can be no question now as to its being “to please herself” that she is marrying Rupert, since she plainly cannot do without him.
They have left the farm behind them, and, dipping down into a valley-let, are passing through a hop-garden, where the eye travels through the long vista of bare poles to little blue air-pictures at the end. From a chestnut-brake near by, a nightingale, mimicked by a throstle, is whit-whitting and glug-glugging. ”

“ Broughton's house in which he had been painting Jael and Sisera, thinking that it would be better to meet an angry and perhaps tipsy husband on the stairs, than it would be either to wait for him till he should make his way into his wife's room, or to hide away from him with the view of escaping altogether from so disagreeable an encounter. He had no fear of the man. ”

“ She does not lay the faintest invidious accent on the name, as if contrasting it with another whose owner had been so far less kind; it is his own guilty heart that supplies the emphasis. His only resource is an anger which—so curiously perverse is human nature—is not even feigned.
"You can go out driving with Mrs. Byng then, though you could not spare time to come out with me," he says in a surly voice.
She does not defend herself but her lower lip trembles.
"Come out with me now," he cries, remorse giving a harshness even to the tone of the sincerely-meant invitation. ”

“ Her eye, flattered by her shaven lawn, cannot rest very severely upon him who has shaven it for her. Her spirits have risen; exhilarated by the wholesome exercise, by the sunshine, by who knows what. Only when her look falls now and again upon Prue, still flung listlessly on the garden-seat, with her nosegay—not more flagging than she—withering on the ground beside her, does a cloud come over it. ”

“ The rector’s wife pauses, brought up against this wall of senseless brazen denial; her thin sensitive face even whiter than its white wont; but she is not easily baffled, nor apt to abandon a task because it wrings her withers.
“My dear,” she says, taking gently hold of the girl’s coldly pendant hand, and using an endearment uncommon to her, being one sparing of banal caresses, “do you think that you are doing Rupert a kindness in providing him with a wife who avoids his look, winces at his voice, and shudders at his touch?”
“What the eye does not see, the heart does not feel. ”

“ Charles Broughton, and the woman he addressed Mrs. Clara Neville, a haughty, handsome widow of thirty, and Mr. Broughton’s affianced wife.
The fair widow would never have owned to herself that she could harbor the slightest feeling of jealousy toward such an insignificant personage as a dressmaker’s associate; but there was something in Mr. Broughton’s expression and manner of speaking of that other lady that brought an angry glitter to the black eyes of his betrothed.
“Who is the person you are speaking of? I never had the pleasure of meeting any other sewing woman in Jenny’s home. ”

“ Oh! there was no one like old Broughton; but for him I should at the present moment be sneaking along the road, pursued by the hissings and hootings of the dirty flatterers of that blackguard coachman.”
“What did you mean,” said I, “by those words of yours, that the coachmen would speedily disappear from the roads?”
“I meant,” said he, “that a new method of travelling is about to be established, which will supersede the old. I am a poor engraver, as my father was before me ”

“ Broughton is not a child. She hasn't been kidnapped and she isn't lost. She is hiding somewhere. She had money and she is accustomed to traveling. I think you may feel reasonably sure that she is safe. Speaking for Lawrence, we are anxious to find her, but speaking for her, it may be just as well that she should not be found until after the grand jury has adjourned."
"What do you mean?" demanded Broughton, fiercely.
"She knows more about the Fullerton murder than it would be agreeable for her to tell in court." ”

“ At that mart of nations it can never be matter for wonder to meet anyone; but who is this to whom her observation is addressed? It is not Mr. Le Marchant, it is not a man at all; it is a slight woman—
"White as a lily, and small as a wand"—
like Lance's sister, dressed with that neat, tight, gray-tinted simplicity, severe yet smart, which marks the well-bred Englishwoman on her travels. Is it one of the younger ones, who has grown up so startlingly like her? Miriam? Rose? or is it, can it be, the dead Elizabeth? ”

“ The sight gives him a shudder. Byng seems to have made her more his own by that gory baptism than by all his frenzied vows and tears.
"Oh, I do not know," she answers, still fetching both breath and words with difficulty. "He was standing up, and he seemed quite right; and then, all of a sudden, in a minute, he went down like a log, and hit his forehead against the sharp corner of the table"—with a convulsive shiver at the recollection. "I ought to have saved him! I ought; but I was not quick enough. I stood stock-still, and now he is dead! You say that he is not; but I am sure he is dead!" ”

“ He found friends among the citizens, especially in the family of the Cottons, with whom he lived, and whom he taught to be enthusiastic Hebrew scholars. In 1588 appeared his first work, 'A Concent of Scripture,' dedicated to the queen. John Speed, the historian, saw the book through the press. In this 'little book of great pains,' as Broughton himself calls it, he attempts to settle the scripture chronology, and to correct profane writers by it. ”

“ Though the sun is nearing his declension, the delicious smell that all day long he has compelled the grass and the flowers to bring him, in odorous tribute, still tarries, making the air rich—âcre, as the French say; a word for which there is no precise English equivalent. On the farther side of the tiny forest they part; if so short a severance can indeed be called to part. Are not they to meet again in an hour or so, at that dinner-party at the Manor, to which both Peggy and Prue are bidden? ”