Chapter 1

      How a Rich Banker Married an Actress.

       Table of Contents

      Faint streaks of crimson glimmer here and there amid the rich darkness of the Kentish woods. Autumn’s red finger has been lightly laid upon the foliage — sparingly, as the artist puts the brighter tints into his picture; but the grandeur of an August sunset blazes upon the peaceful landscape, and lights all into glory.

      The encircling woods and wide lawn-like meadows, the still ponds of limpid water, the trim hedges, and the smooth winding roads; undulating hill-tops, melting into the purple distance; laboring-men’s cottages, gleaming white from the surrounding foliage; solitary roadside inns with brown thatched roofs and moss-grown stacks of lop-sided chimneys; noble mansions hiding behind ancestral oaks; tiny Gothic edifices; Swiss and rustic lodges; pillared gates surmounted by escutcheons hewn in stone, and festooned with green wreaths of clustering ivy; village churches and prim school-houses — every object in the fair English prospect is steeped in a luminous haze, as the twilight shadows steal slowly upward from the dim