| CHAPTER I., II., III., IV., V., VI., VII., VIII., IX., X., XI., XII. |
THE OSBORNES
BY
E. F. B E N S O N
NEW YORK
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION
INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN
COPYRIGHT, 1909, 1910, BY DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
PUBLISHED, OCTOBER, 1910
THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y.
THE OSBORNES
CHAPTER I
FOR the last five hours all the windows along the front of the newestand whitest and most pretentious and preposterous house in Park Lane hadbeen blazing with lights, which were kindled while the last flames ofthe long July day had scarcely died down into the ash-coloured night,and were still shining when morning began to tinge the velvet gray ofthe sky with colour and extinguish the stars. The lights, however, inNo. 92 seemed to be of more durable quality than the heavenlyconstellations and long after morning had come and the early trafficbegun to boom on the roadway, they still burned with undiminishedsplendour. It was literally true, also, that all the windows in the longGothic facade which seemed to have strayed from Nuremberg into the WestEnd of London, had been ablaze; not only was the ground floor lit, andthe first floor, where was the ballroom, out of which, all night, hadfloated endless webs of perpetual melody, but the bedrooms above, thoughsleep then would have been impossible, and, as a matter of fact, theywere yet untenanted, had been equally luminous, while from behind theflamboyant balustrade the top of the house, smaller windows, which{6}might be conjectured to belong to servants’ rooms, had joined in thegeneral illumination. This was strictly in accordance with Mrs.Osborne’s orders, as given to that staid and remarkable person called byher (when she forgot) Willum and (when she remembered) Thoresby, and(also when she remembered) alluded to as “my major domo.” “Willum” hehad been in earlier and far less happy years, first as boot boy, thenwhen the family blossomed into footmen, as third, second, and finallyfirst of his order. Afterward came things more glorious yet and Thoresbywas major domo. At the present time Mrs. Osborne had pro