Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England A Fluttered Dovecote By George Manville Fenn Illustrations by Gordon Browne Published by D. Appleton and Company, New York. This edition dated 1890. A Fluttered Dovecote, by George Manville Fenn. ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ A FLUTTERED DOVECOTE, BY GEORGE MANVILLE FENN. CHAPTER ONE. MEMORY THE FIRST--MAMMA MAKES A DISCOVERY. Oh, dear! You will excuse me for a moment? I must take another sheet of paper--I, Laura Bozerne, virgin and martyr, of Chester Square, Belgravia--for that last sheet was all spotted with tears, and when I applied my handkerchief, and then the blotting-paper, the glaze was gone and the ink ran. _Ce n'est que le premier pas qui coute_, the French say, but it is not true. However, I have made up my mind to write this history of my sufferings, so to begin. Though what the world would call young--eighteen--I feel so old--ah! so old--and my life would fill volumes--thick volumes--with thrilling incidents; but a natural repugnance to publicity forces me to confine myself to the adventures of one single year, whose eventful hours were numbered, whose days were one chaos of excitement or rack of suspense. How are the scenes brought vividly before my mind's eye as I turn over the leaves of my poor blotted diary, and recognise a tear blister here, and recall the blistering; a smear there; or find the writing illegible from having been hastily closed when wet, on account of the prying advance of some myrmidon of tyranny when the blotting-paper was not at hand. Faces too familiar rise before me, to smile or frown, as my associations with them were grave or gay. Now I shudder--now I thrill with pleasure; now it is a frown that contracts my brow, now a smile curls my lip; while the tears, "Oh, ye tears!"--by the way, it is irrelevant, but I have the notes of a poem on tears, a subject not yet hackneyed, while it seems to me to be a theme that flows well--"tears, fears, leers, jeers," and so on. Oh! if I had only possessed yellow hair and violet eyes, and determination, what I might have been! If I had only entered this great world as one of those delicious heroines, so masculine, so superior, that our authors vividly paint--although they might be engravings, they are so much alike. If I had but stood with flashing eyes a Lady Audley, a Mrs Armitage, the heroine of "Falkner Lyle," or any other of those charming creatures, I could have been happy in defying the whips and stings, and all that sort of thing; but now, alas! alack!--ah, what do I say?--my heart is torn, wrecked, crushed. Hope is dead and buried; while love--ah, me!