Transcriber’s Notes: Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_), and text enclosed by equal signs is in bold (=bold=). Additional Transcriber’s Notes are at the end. * * * * * SELECT LIBRARY No. 231 NEVA’S THREE LOVERS _BY_ MRS. HARRIET LEWIS [Illustration] Neva’s Three Lovers _A NOVEL_ BY MRS. HARRIET LEWIS AUTHOR OF “Adrift in the World,” “The Bailiff’s Scheme,” “The Belle of the Season,” “Cecil Rosse,” “The Haunted Husband,” “Sundered Hearts,” and numerous other books published in the EAGLE, NEW EAGLE, and SELECT Libraries. [Illustration] STREET & SMITH CORPORATION PUBLISHERS 79-89 Seventh Avenue, New York * * * * * Copyright, 1871 and 1892 By Robert Bonner’s Sons Neva’s Three Lovers * * * * * NEVA’S THREE LOVERS. CHAPTER I. THE GAME WELL BEGUN. Sir Harold Wynde, Baronet, was standing upon the pier head at Brighton, looking idly seaward, and watching the play of the sunset rays on the waters, the tossing white-capped waves, and the white sails in the distance against the blue sky. He was not yet fifty years of age, tall and handsome and stately, with fair complexion, fair hair, and keen blue eyes, which at times beamed with a warm and genial radiance that seemed to emanate from his soul. The rare nobility of that soul expressed itself in his features. His commanding intellect betrayed itself in his square, massive brows. His grand nature was patent in every look and smile. He was a widower with two children, the elder a son, who was a captain in a fine regiment in India, the younger a daughter still at boarding-school. He possessed a magnificent estate in Kent, a house in town, and a marine villa, and rejoiced in a clear income of seventy thousand pounds a year. As might be expected from his rare personal and material advantages, he was a lion at Brighton, even though the season was at its height, and peers and peeresses abounded at that fashionable resort. Titled ladies--to use a well-worn phrase--“set their caps” for him; manœuvring mammas smiled upon him; portly papas with their “quivers full of daughters,” and with groaning purses, urged him to dine at their houses or hotels; and widows of every age looked sweetly at him, and thought how divine it would be to be chosen to reign as mistress over the baronet’s estate of Hawkhurst. But Sir Harold went his ways quietly, seeming oblivious of the hopes and schemes of these manœuverers. He had had a good wife, and he had no intention of marrying again. And so, as he stood carelessly leaning against the railing on the pier head, under the gay awning, his thoughts were far away from the gaily dressed promenaders sauntering down the chain pier or pacing with slow steps to and fro behind him.