'
By inscribing your name above this little story I please myself at
the risk of helping the reader to discover not only that it wants a
something, but precisely what that something is. It wants--to confess
and have done with it--all the penetrating subtleties of insight, all
the delicacies of interpretation, you would have brought to Dorothea's
aid, if for a moment I may suppose her worth your championing. So I
invoke your name to stand before my endeavour like a figure outside
the brackets in an algebraical sum, to make all the difference by
multiplying the meaning contained.
But your consent gives me another opportunity even more warmly desired.
And I think that you, too, will take less pleasure in discovering how
excellent your genius appears to one who nevertheless finds it a
mystery in operation, than in learning that he has not missed to
admire, at least, and with a sense almost of personal loyalty, the
sustained and sustaining pride in good workmanship by which you have
set a common example to all who practise, however diversely, the art
in which we acknowledge you a master.
A. T. QUILLER-COUCH
October 25th, 1901
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I THE WESTCOTES OF BAYFIELD
CHAPTER II THE ORANGE ROOM
CHAPTER III A BALL, A SNOWSTORM, AND A SNOWBALL
CHAPTER IV ENCOUNTER BETWEEN A HIGH HORSE AND A HOBBY
CHAPTER V BEGINS WITH ANCIENT HISTORY AND ENDS WITH AN OLD STORY
CHAPTER VI FATE IN A LAURELLED POST-CHAISE
CHAPTER VII LOVE AND AN OLD MAID
CHAPTER VIII CORPORAL ZEALLY INTERVENES
CHAPTER IX DOROTHEA CONFESSES
CHAPTER X DARTMOOR
CHAPTER XI THE NEW DOROTHEA
CHAPTER XII GENERAL ROCHAMBEAU TELLS A STORY; AND THE TING-TANG RINGS
FOR THE LAST TIME
CHAPTER I
THE WESTCOTES OF BAYFIELD
A mural tablet in Axcester Parish Church describes Endymion Westcote as
"a conspicuous example of that noblest work of God, the English Country
Gentleman.
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