The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an AttorneyWarren, Samuel
General
The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney
Warren, Samuel
Detective and mystery stories, English; Legal stories, English
The Countess of Seyton, previous to her first marriage, was Miss Clara
Hayley, second daughter of the Reverend John Hayley, the rector of a
parish in Devonshire. She married, when only nineteen years of age, a
Captain Gosford. Her husband was ten years older than herself, and, as
she discovered after marriage, was cursed with a morose and churlish
temper and disposition. Previous to her acquaintance with Gosford, she
had been intimate with, almost betrothed to, Mr. Arthur Kingston, a young
gentleman connected with the peerage, and at that time heir-apparent to
the great expectancies and actual poverty of his father, Sir Arthur
Kingston. The haughty baronet, the instant he was made aware of the
nature of his son's intimacy with the rector's daughter, packed the young
man off to the continent on his travels. The Reverend John Hayley and his
beautiful Clara were as proud as the baronet, and extremely indignant
that it should be thought either of them wished to entrap or delude
Arthur Kingston into an unequal or ineligible marriage. This feeling of
pride and resentment aided the success of Mr. Gosford's suit, and Clara
Hayley, like many other rash, high-notioned young ladies, doomed herself
to misery, in order to show the world, and Mr. Arthur Kingston and his
proud father especially, that she had a spirit. The union was a most
unhappy one. One child only, which died in its infancy, was born to them;
and after being united somewhat more than two years, a separation,
vehemently insisted on by the wife's father, took place, and the
unhappily-wedded daughter returned to her parent's roof. Mr. Gosford--he
had some time before sold out of the army--traveled about the country in
search of amusement, and latterly of health, (for his unhappy cankerous
temper at last affected and broke down his never very robust physical
constitution), accompanied for the twelvemonth preceding his death by a
young man belonging to the medical profession, of the name of Chilton.
Mr. and Mrs. Gosford had been separated a few days less than three years
when the husband died, at the village of Swords in Ireland, and not far
distant from Dublin. The intelligence was first conveyed to the widow by
a paragraph in the "Freeman's Journal," a Dublin newspaper; and by the
following post a letter arrived from Mr. Chilton, inclosing a ring which
the deceased had requested should be sent to his wife, and a note,
dictated just previous to his death-hour, in which he expressed regret
for the past, and admitted that he alone had been to blame for the
unhappy separation. A copy of his will, made nearly a twelvemonth
previously, was also forwarded, by which he bequeathed his property,
amounting to about three hundred pounds per annum, to a distant relative
then residing in New Holland. By a memorandum of a subsequent date, Mr.
Chilton was to have all the money and other personals he might die in
actual possession of, after defraying the necessary funeral expenses.
This will, Mr.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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