The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Tragic Bride, by Francis Brett Young

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Title: The Tragic Bride

Author: Francis Brett Young

Release Date: June 21, 2008 [eBook #25867]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TRAGIC BRIDE***

E-text prepared by Al Haines

THE TRAGIC BRIDE

by

FRANCIS BRETT YOUNG

London: Martin Secker
1920

* * * * *

WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR

NOVELS

THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
THE CRESCENT MOON
THE IRON AGE
THE DARK TOWER
DEEP SEA
UNDERGROWTH (with E. BRETT YOUNG)

POETRY

FIVE DEGREES SOUTH
POEMS, 1916-1918

BELLES LETTRES
ROBERT BRIDGES: A CRITICAL STUDY
MARCHING ON TANGA

* * * * *

TO

THE COUNTESS OF

PEMBROKE AND MONTGOMERY

PROLOGUE

I never met Gabrielle Hewish. I suppose I should really call her by that
name, for her marriage took the colour out of it as surely as if she had
entered a nunnery, and adopted the frigid and sisterly label of some
female saint. Nobody had ever heard of her husband before she married
him, and nobody ever heard of Gabrielle afterwards, except those who were
acquainted with the story of Arthur Payne, as I was, and, perhaps, a
coroner's jury in Devonshire, a county where juries are more than usually
slow of apprehension. In these days you will not even find the name of
Hewish in Debrett, for Gabrielle was the baronet's only child, and when
Sir Jocelyn died, in the early days of his daughter's married life, the
family, which for the last half century had been putting out no more than
a few feeble and not astonishingly brilliant leaves on its one living
branch, withered altogether, as well it might in the thin Irish soil
where it had stubbornly held its own since the days of Queen Elizabeth.
After all, baronetcies are cheap enough in Ireland, and one more or less
could make very little difference to the amenities of County Galway,
where Roscarna, for all I know, may have been absorbed and parcelled out
by the Congested Districts Board ten years ago. Even in clubs and places
where they gossip, I doubt