The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Prisoner of Zenda, by Anthony Hope

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Title: The Prisoner of Zenda

Author: Anthony Hope

Release Date: January 10, 2006 [EBook #95]
[This file last updated October 6, 2010]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PRISONER OF ZENDA ***

Produced by Judith Boss and David Widger

THE PRISONER OF ZENDA

by Anthony Hope

CONTENTS

1 The Rassendylls--With a Word on the Elphbergs
2 Concerning the Colour of Men's Hair
3 A Merry Evening with a Distant Relative
4 The King Keeps his Appointment
5 The Adventures of an Understudy
6 The Secret of a Cellar
7 His Majesty Sleeps in Strelsau
8 A Fair Cousin and a Dark Brother
9 A New Use for a Tea-Table
10 A Great Chance for a Villain
11 Hunting a Very Big Boar
12 I Receive a Visitor and Bait a Hook
13 An Improvement on Jacob's Ladder
14 A Night Outside the Castle
15 I Talk with a Tempter
16 A Desperate Plan
17 Young Rupert's Midnight Diversions
18 The Forcing of the Trap
19 Face to Face in the Forest
20 The Prisoner and the King
21 If Love Were All!
22 Present, Past--and Future?

CHAPTER 1

The Rassendylls--With a Word on the Elphbergs

"I wonder when in the world you're going to do anything, Rudolf?" said
my brother's wife.

"My dear Rose," I answered, laying down my egg-spoon, "why in the world
should I do anything? My position is a comfortable one. I have an
income nearly sufficient for my wants (no one's income is ever quite
sufficient, you know), I enjoy an enviable social position: I am
brother to Lord Burlesdon, and brother-in-law to that charming lady, his
countess. Behold, it is enough!"

"You are nine-and-twenty," she observed, "and you've done nothing but--"

"Knock about? It is true. Our family doesn't need to do things."

This remark of mine rather annoyed Rose, for everybody knows (and
therefore there can be no harm in referring to the fact) that, pretty
and accomplished as she herself is, her family is hardly of the same
standing as the Rassendyl