Read "His Darling Sin" by Mary Elizabeth Braddon online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
"Happy he / With such a mother! faith in womankind / Beats with his blood, and trust in all things high / Comes easy to him, and tho' he trip and fall / He shall not blind his soul with clay. "
The Honourable Mrs. Rannock, widow of Captain Rannock, second son of Lord Kirkmichael, lived in a narrow-fronted Queen Anne house facing Wellington Barracks. It was one of the smallest houses to be found in a fashionable quarter, and the rent was the only thing big about it; but Mrs. Rannock had lived at Court for the greater part of her life, having begun as a maid-of-honour when she and her Royal mistress were young, and she could hardly have existed out of that rarefied atmosphere. Refinement and elegance were as necessary to her as air and water are to the common herd; she would have pined to death in a vulgar neighbourhood; her personal wants were of the smallest, but her surroundings had to be the surroundings of a lady.