I Forbid the Banns! — page 143: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

CHAPTER XxX. ON AN OAK SETTEE. ULIAN CHARLTON sat alone on the evening of the J day of his arrival in England in the dining room of Brackenhurst Court, the place which he had inherited from his father, and which his father had inherited from Julian’s grandfather. How many times “ great ’’ should be prefixed to the original grandfather who had built Brackenhurst Court in the days of the first Duke of Marlborough, he could hardly tell—he did not care to think. Sir God- frey had painted the portrait of the original Charlton— a major of dragoons, His descendants had been beau- tified in turn by Sir Peter, Gainsborough, Sir Joshua, Sir Thomas, and so on down to Sir Francis, P. R. A., who had still a little time left over from hunting to bestow upon the art of portraiture, as it was understood twenty-five years ago. The portraits were judiciously distributed through the great rooms of the Court. Behind Julian himself in the dining room were two Romneys—his great-grandfather and his great-grandmother—and in front of him were the two Grants—his father and his mother. He had dined early, and as May was within a few days of arriving, it was light enough at half-past seven for him to be able to distinguish the features of the two portraits that hung on either side of the fireplace, in the grate of which a couple of logs flickered. “When I got your telegram, Master Julian,” the aged butler had explained, ‘“‘ I said to Mrs. Barwell, ‘ We’ll have a fire lit on chance in the dining room,’ says I, ‘ for he’ll 133 Gomichbookssco