My Lady Caprice(我的无常夫人).pdf

My Lady Caprice
My Lady Caprice
by Jeffrey Farnol
1
My Lady Caprice
I
TREASURE TROVE
I sat fishing. I had not caught anything, of course - I rarely do, nor
am I fond of fishing in the very smallest degree, but I fished assiduously
all the same, because circumstances demanded it.
It had e about through Lady Warburton, Lisbeth's maternal aunt.
Who Lisbeth is you will learn if you trouble to read these veracious
narratives - suffice it for the present that she has been an orphan from her
youth up, with no living relative save her married sister Julia and her Aunt
(with a capital A) - the Lady Warburton aforesaid.
Lady Warburton is small and somewhat bony, with a sharp chin and a
sharper nose, and invariably uses te; also, she is possessed of much
worldly goods.
Precisely a week ago Lady Warburton had requested me to call upon
her - had regarded me with a curious exactitude through her te,
and gently though firmly (Lady Warburton is always firm) had suggested
that Elizabeth, though a dear child, was young and inclined to be a little
self-willed. That she (Lady Warburton) was of opinion that Elizabeth
had mistaken the friendship which had existed between us so long for
something stronger. That although she (Lady Warburton) quite
appreciated the fact that one who wrote books, and occasionally a play,
was not necessarily immoral - Still I was, of course, a terrible Bohemian,
and the air of Bohemia was not calculated to conduce to that degree of
matrimonial harmony which she (Lady Warburton) as Elizabeth's Aunt,
standing to her in place of a mother, could wish for. That, therefore,
under these circumstances my attentions were - etc., etc. Here I would
say in justice to myself that despite the torrent of her eloquence I had at
first made some attempt at resistance; but who could hope to contend
essfully against a woman possessed of such an indomitable nose and
chin, and one, moreover, who could level a pair of te with such
deadly pr