CAN YOU FORGIVE HER?. Anthony Trollope

Chapter XLVII. Mr Cheesacre’s Disappointment

       Chapter XLVIII. Preparations for Lady Monk’s Party

       Chapter XLIX. How Lady Glencora Went to Lady Monk’s Party

       Chapter L. How Lady Glencora Came Back From Lady Monk’s Party

       Chapter LI. Bold Speculations on Murder

       Chapter LII. What Occurred in Suffolk Street, Pall Mall

       Chapter LIII. The Last Will of the Old Squire

       Chapter LIV. Showing How Alice Was Punished

       Chapter LV. The Will

       Chapter LVI. Another Walk on the Fells

       Chapter LVII. Showing How the Wild Beast Got Himself Back From the Mountains

       Chapter LVIII. The Pallisers at Breakfast

       Chapter LIX. The Duke of St Bungay in Search of a Minister

       Chapter LX. Alice Vavasor’s Name Gets Into the Money Market

       Chapter LXI. The Bills Are Made All Right

       Chapter LXII. Going Abroad

       Chapter LXIII. Mr John Grey in Queen Anne Street

       Chapter LXIV. The Rocks and Valleys

       Chapter LXV. The First Kiss

       Chapter LXVI. Lady Monk’s Plan

       Chapter LXVII. The Last Kiss

       Chapter LXVIII. From London to Baden

       Chapter LXIX. From Baden to Lucerne

       Chapter LXX. at Lucerne

       Chapter LXXI. Showing How George Vavasor Received a Visit

       Chapter LXXII. Showing How George Vavasor Paid a Visit

       Chapter LXXIII. in Which Come Tidings of Great Moment to All Pallisers

       Chapter LXXIV. Showing What Happened in the Churchyard

       Chapter LXXV. Rouge Et Noir

       Chapter LXXVI. The Landlord’s Bill

       Chapter LXXVII. The Travellers Return Home

       Chapter LXXVIII. Mr Cheesacre’s Fate

       Chapter LXXIX. Diamonds Are Diamonds

       Chapter LXXX. The Story Is Finished Within the Halls of the Duke of Omnium

      Volume I

       Table of Contents

      Chapter I.

       Mr Vavasor and His Daughter

       Table of Contents

      Whether or no, she, whom you are to forgive, if you can, did or did not belong to the Upper Ten Thousand of this our English world, I am not prepared to say with any strength of affirmation. By blood she was connected with big people,—distantly connected with some very big people indeed, people who belonged to the Upper Ten Hundred if there be any such division; but of these very big relations she had known and seen little, and they had cared as little for her. Her grandfather, Squire Vavasor of Vavasor Hall, in Westmoreland, was a country gentleman, possessing some thousand a year at the outside, and he therefore never came up to London, and had no ambition to have himself numbered as one in any exclusive set. A hot-headed, ignorant, honest old gentleman, he lived ever at Vavasor Hall, declaring to any who would listen to him, that the country was going to the mischief, and congratulating himself that at any rate, in his county, parliamentary reform had been powerless to alter the old political arrangements. Alice Vavasor, whose offence against the world I am to tell you, and if possible to excuse, was the daughter of his younger son; and as her father, John Vavasor, had done nothing to raise the family name to eminence, Alice could not lay claim to any high position from her birth as a Vavasor. John Vavasor had come up to London early in life as a barrister, and had failed. He had failed at least in attaining either much wealth or much repute, though he had succeeded in earning, or perhaps I might better say, in obtaining, a livelihood. He had married a lady somewhat older than himself, who was in possession of four hundred a year, and who was related to those big people to whom I have alluded. Who these were and the special nature of the relationship, I shall be called upon to explain hereafter, but at present it will suffice to say that Alice Macleod gave great offence to all her friends by her marriage. She did not, however, give them much time for the indulgence of their anger. Having given birth to a daughter within twelve months of her marriage, she died, leaving in abeyance that question as to whether the fault of her marriage should or should not be pardoned by her family.

      When a man marries an heiress for her money, if that money be within her own control, as was the case with Miss Macleod’s fortune, it is generally well for the speculating lover that the lady’s friends should quarrel with him and with her. She is thereby driven to throw herself entirely into the gentleman’s arms, and he thus becomes possessed of the wife and the money without the abominable nuisance of stringent settlements. But the Macleods, though they quarrelled