The Man in Possession — page 99: what you’re looking at

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

94 THE MAN IN POSSESSION. anecdote of that lady’s son concerning an ‘‘Ar little filly,” which he had backed and which played the mean trick of coming in last instead of first at Don- caster, to his great discomfiture and loss. Kate neither heard nor wished to hear anything further respecting the animal, and rose with an alacrity which quite confounded her eloquent com- panion. She was almost the last to leave the dining-room, and the line of rustling silks and the erect and stiffly dignified ‘‘backs” looked quite ominous as_ she followed in their wake. She was most distinctly under the ban of ‘‘dis- approval.” She had gone in to dinner and been looked at with special favour by the owner of $15,000 a year. She, a penniless nobody. Such a fault was quite in- excusable, and an unexpressed but understood deci- sion to ‘‘ put herdown” was unanimously arrived at by herfeminine foes. What had all these bejewelled dowagers brought their daughters here for but to ‘“catch” this desirable baronet, and for what pur- pose had these innocent and guileless maidens donned their best frocks and ‘‘ tied their tresses” and bared their milk-white shoulders if not tocaptivateand win this same eligible individual? And here was this outsider—this girl from the ‘‘ Wilds of Ireland,” as they termed her birthplace—here was she actually scattering all their schemes like chaff before the wind and threatening to carry off their feeble-minded prey before their very eyes. Once in the drawing-room Kate was decidedly ‘‘cut” by the group, young and old, who flocked COMICIDOOKS. C(O)