Penny Blood Serial Fiction — page 64: what you’re looking at

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

CHAPTER VI THE JUDGE AND JURY SOCIETY On the same evening when the scene above described took place at the castle in Lincolnshire, Lord Saxondale was dining by himself at the mansion in Park Lane. He felt lonely, dull, and dispirited. He had broken with the friend whom he liked best of all his acquaintances, indeed, the only one with whom he had ever been exceedingly intimate for, notwithstanding his rank, his position and his wealth, there were very few young men in his own sphere who had chosen to associate much with him. It was not that his pride was too overweening, that his bearing was too arrogant, or his manners too supercilious, but because he was altogether considered a disagreeable and uncompanionable young man. So far as his arrogance, his vanity, his conceit, and his insufferable pride were concerned, there were many young scions of the aristocracy who possessed all those faults; indeed few were without them, but then they had some redeeming qualities, or at least some which met each other’s approval, whereas Edmund Saxondale had none of these. He was generally looked upon as a miserable coxcomb, without courage to back up the pride which he assumed. On two or three occasions, when in the society of young men, he had put up with insults which every one else would have indignantly resented, and thus he had drawn down upon himself the contempt of those who would otherwise have gladly sought his society for his rank and his money. An allusion has been made in a recent chapter to the last insult of the kind which he had received without seeking what in fashionable life is termed “ satisfaction,” and as this was the most flagrant instance that had occurred in respect to him, he had become more talked about than ever as a down- 47 GOMIicodoo (-) <S (C(O)