Sink or Swim? , Volume III by Matilda Charlotte Houstoun

If the reader of this half-true story has followed with any portion of / just indignation the tortuous ways through which an insane craving after / power has lead the nominal heroine of these pages, he or she will not / regret to learn that, in consequence of a high legal opinion -- _the_ / highest, indeed, in the land -- having been given, at the eleventh hour, / against the possibility of setting aside Earl Gillingham's last will and / testament, Lady Millicent was forced, with a reluctance comparable only / to the pang of plucking out a right eye or wrenching out a wrong tooth, / to abandon the unfilial as well as unmotherly intention which she had so / long secretly as well as avowedly harboured.

The intense though silent wrath of Lady Millicent when she found that / the great law-lords were not to be led -- albeit the forceps or chain, / call it what you will, was held and drawn by a lady of great estate, / strong courage, and ancient name -- by the nose may be better imagined / than described. Misfortunes never, according to the old adage, come / singly, and this autocratic lady found the proof of the proverb to her / cost. In her youth she had never cared to provide herself with friends, / and, when it was too late, she made the unwelcome discovery that there / are certain manufactures of which the art cannot be learned save in the / freshness and elasticity of early womanhood. The world, too, which had / interested itself a good deal in Lady Millicent's efforts, and which was / hesitating as to its decision from a laudable desire to side with the / strongest, bore rather hardly in her discomfiture on the baffled and / indignant woman. That she had been unmotherly, grasping, / avaricious -- everything that was least feminine and most odious -- everyone / was more than willing to allow; whereas Arthur -- regarding whom heads had / been ominously shaken, and of whose scampishness so many (while the / great affair was in abeyance) had a word, more or less severe, to / say -- became once more the popular "young fellow," the idol of fair / women's hearts, and the object of future attacks from prudent mammas and / half-despairing _demoiselles à marier_.