E-text prepared by Suzanne Shell, Mary Meehan, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made available by Internet Archive/American Libraries (http://www.archive.org/details/americana) Note: Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive/American Libraries. See http://www.archive.org/details/janeoglander00lown JANE OGLANDER by Mrs. Belloc Lowndes "Something even more imperious than reason admonishes us that life's inmost secret lies not in the slow adaptation of man to circumstance, but in his costly victories and splendid defeats." New York Charles Scribner's Sons 1911 Copyright, 1911, by Charles Scribner's Sons Published April, 1911 JANE OGLANDER PROLOGUE "Elle fut née pour plaire aux nobles âmes, Pour les consoler un peu d'un monde impur." Jane Oglander was walking across Westminster Bridge on a late September day. It was a little after four o'clock--on the bridge perhaps the quietest time of the working day--but a ceaseless stream of human beings ebbed to and fro. She herself came from the Surrey side of the river, and now and again she stayed her steps and looked over the parapet. It was plain--or so thought one who was looking at her very attentively--that she was more interested in the Surrey side, in the broken line of St. Thomas's Hospital, in the grey-red walls of Lambeth Palace and the Lollards' Tower, than in the mass of the Parliament buildings opposite. But though Miss Oglander stopped three times in her progress over the bridge, she did not stay at any one place for more than a few moments--not long enough to please the man who had gradually come up close to her. Having first noticed her in front of the bridge entrance of St. Thomas's Hospital, this man had made it his business to keep, if well behind, then in step with her. A human being--and especially a woman--may be described in many ways. For our purpose it was fortunate that on this eventful afternoon of her life Miss Oglander happened to attract the attention of an observer, who, if then living in great penury and solitude, was yet destined to become what a lover of literature has described as the greatest interpreter of the human side of London life since Dickens.