tion>E. Phillips Oppenheim
The Yellow House; Master of Men
Published by Good Press, 2021
EAN 4057664622167
Table of Contents
CHAPTER IV OUR MYSTERIOUS NEIGHBORS
CHAPTER V A SOUTH AMERICAN LETTER
CHAPTER VII A FRUITLESS APPEAL
CHAPTER VIII THE COMING OF MR. BERDENSTEIN
CHAPTER IX A TERRIBLE INTERRUPTION
CHAPTER XI THE GATHERING OF THE CLOUD
CHAPTER XII MR. BERDENSTEIN’S SISTER
CHAPTER XIV ADELAIDE FORTRESS’S GUEST
CHAPTER XV THE LIKENESS OF PHILIP MALTABAR
CHAPTER XVI “IT WAS MY FATHER”
CHAPTER XVII A CONFERENCE OR TWO
CHAPTER XIX A CORNER OF THE CURTAIN
CHAPTER XXII AN UNHOLY COMPACT
CHAPTER XXIII IN THE PLANTATION
CHAPTER XXVI THE EVIDENCE OF CIRCUMSTANCES
CHAPTER XXVII A GHOST IN WHITECHAPEL
CHAPTER XXIX THE BREAKING OF THE STORM
CHAPTER XXX THE MASTER OF COLVILLE HALL
CHAPTER I
THE YELLOW HOUSE
Positively every one, with two unimportant exceptions, had called upon us. The Countess had driven over from Sysington Hall, twelve miles away, with two anæmic-looking daughters, who had gushed over our late roses and the cedar trees which shaded the lawn. The Holgates of Holgate Brand and Lady Naselton of Naselton had presented themselves on the same afternoon. Many others had come in their train, for what these very great people did the neighborhood was bound to endorse. There was a little veiled anxiety, a few elaborately careless questions as to the spelling of our name; but when my father had mentioned the second “f,” and made a casual allusion to the Warwickshire Ffolliots—with whom we were not indeed on speaking terms, but who were certainly our cousins—a distinct breath of relief was followed by a gush of mild cordiality. There were wrong Ffolliots and right Ffolliots. We belonged to the latter. No one had made a mistake or compromised themselves in any way by leaving their cards upon a small country vicar and his daughters. And earlier callers went away and spread a favorable report. Those who were hesitating, hesitated no longer. Our little carriage drive, very steep and very hard to turn in, was cut up with the wheels of many chariots. The whole county within a reasonable distance came, with two exceptions. And those two exceptions were Mr. Bruce Deville of Deville Court, on the borders of whose domain our little church and vicarage lay, and the woman who dwelt in the “Yellow House.”
I asked Lady Naselton about both of them one afternoon. Her ladyship, by the way, had been one of our earliest visitors, and had evinced from the first a strong desire to become my sponsor in Northshire society. She was middle-aged, bright, and modern—a thorough little cosmopolitan, with a marked absence in her deportment and mannerisms of anything bucolic or rural. I enjoyed talking to her, and this was her third visit. We were sitting out upon the lawn, drinking afternoon tea, and making the best of a brilliant October afternoon. A yellow gleam from the front of that oddly-shaped little house, flashing through the dark pine trees, brought it into my mind. It was only from one particular point in our garden that any part of it was visible at all. It chanced that I occupied that particular spot, and during a lull in the
