[Gutenberg 49903] • My Lady Nobody: A Novel

Fiction, Novel, ROMANCE, URSULA, Lady, VAN HELMONTS, DEAD-AWAKE

[www.thaiperfect.com/ebooks](http://www.thaiperfect.com/ebooks)

CHAPTER I. URSULA

It was a white-hot July morning. Long ago the impatient earth had cast aside her thin veil of summer twilight; already she lay, a Danae, in exultant swoon beneath the golden sun. Yet the bridegroom had barely leaped forth to the conquest; his rath kisses were still drinking the pearly freshness from the dawn, while the loud birds filled the resonant heavens with the tumult of their bridal song.

It was still so early, and already so immovably warm; all wide earth and deep sky agasp in the naked blaze. Ursula drew forward her broad-brimmed straw hat, where she stood picking pease among the tall lines of pale-green, blossom-speckled tangle.

“Oof!” she said. Not as your burly farmer says it, but with the prettiest little high-pitched echo of the louder note. And she buried her soft brown cheeks in the cool moisture of her half-filled basket. Then she gravely resumed her work, and a great, big, booming bumblebee, which had thought to play hide and seek with Ursula’s nose, sailed away in disgust that on such a sun-soaked morning any of God’s creatures should bend to toil in his sight.

Ursula Rovers was not one of those who serve their Maker with dancing and a shout. Yet she sang to herself, very sedately, as she broke off each bursting pod, amid the fiercer jubilation of the passion-drunk blackbirds and finches,

“Stand then with girded loins, and see your lamps be burning;

What though the sun lie fair upon your paths to-day,

Who reads the evening sky? Who knows if winds be turning?

The night comes surely. Watch and pray!”

The prim vegetable garden, with its ranks of gay salads and pompous cabbages, lay serenely roasting, as vegetable gardens delight to do, in unabated verdure. About Ursula’s corner the lattice-work of creepers put forth some faint attempt at a stunted shadow. Dominé Rovers came down the walk, his coat-flaps brushing the currant-bushes.

“Who reads the evening sky? Who knows if winds be turning?”

“Ursula!”

“Yes, Captain.”

“Come in and shell your pease, while I recite you my sermon.”

“But I must pick them first, father!”

“True. What I love best in you, Ursula, is that you are as logical as if you were not a woman.”

CONTENTS

URSULA

THE DOMINÉ

HOME

THE VAN HELMONTS

LE PREMIER PAS—QUI COÛTE

UNCONSCIOUS RIVALS

HARRIET’S ROMANCE

THE TRYST

OTTO’S WOOING

AN INDELIBLE STAIN

ONE HOUR OF HAPPINESS

“AN OLD MAID’S LOVE”

FOR LIFE OR DEATH

A SATISFACTORY SETTLEMENT

DONNA É MOBILE

A FOOL AND HIS FOLLY

BROTHERLY HATE

THE DUTY OF THE PARENT

FORFEITS ALL ROUND

MYNHEER MOPIUS’S PARTY

BARON VAN HELMONT

GERARD’S SHARE

TOPSY REXELAER

MASKS AND FACES

CORONETS AND CROSSES

FREULE LOUISA

PEACE AND GOOD-WILL

THE SECOND MRS. MOPIUS

THE BLOT ON THE SNOW

CHRISTMAS EVE

“WHOSOEVER SHALL SMITE THEE—”

THE GREAT PEACE

INTRIGUE

THE NEW LIFE

“MRS. GERARD”

THE DEAD-AWAKE

POLITICS

THE OLD BLOT

THE COUNSELLOR

THE NEW BAILIFF

THUNDER IN THE TROPICS

THE FINGER OF SCORN

ARRESTED

AFRAID

THE HOME-COMING OF THE HERO

THE FATAL KNIFE

TRIUMPHANT

A WIFE FOR GERARD

FACE TO FACE WITH HERSELF