Miss Cheyne of Essilmont, Volume 2 by James Grant

Bevil Goring had latterly from various sources heard much of Cadbury's general character, which fully bore out the opinions expressed of him by the two _vauriens_, who were quite as unscrupulous -- to wit, Sir Jasper Dehorsey and Mr. Tom Hawksleigh, and, like him, knew many of 'the soiled doves who flutter from tree to tree in the forest of St. John, or build their nests in Brompton Groves.'

'The union of January and May is so common now-a-days,' says the author of 'Barren Honour,' 'that no one thinks of inditing epithalamia thereon, satiric or otherwise. ' But that Alison could be in any way a party to the trickery of which the wealthy Cadbury was quite capable, was not for a moment to be imagined, as she idolised her father, with all his defects of temper and character, and would never leave him a prey to doubt and anxiety, though at present these emotions rather took the form of parental indignation. So what then was to be thought?