London (England) -- Fiction; Mate selection -- Fiction; Political fiction; Politicians -- Fiction
Quite recently Archibald Cator ascertained that the woman Biancheri, who
had so cleverly plotted the grand _coup_, had been deserted by her
scoundrelly husband, and had died alone and in penury in a bare room on
the fifth storey of a rickety house in the Montmartre quarter of Paris.
Biancheri himself is at this moment languishing in prison at Grenoble,
having been arrested by French gendarmes in the very act of making a
plan of one of the Alpine frontier fortresses.
All London is well aware how Dudley Chisholm's marriage, so long
expected, took place, not with the _eclat_ common to a fashionable
wedding in town, but quietly in the quaint old village church at
Wroxeter, where the mellow-toned bells pealed merrily, and the school
children strewed the roses of July in their path.
And every one, both in society and out of it, knows that Lady Dudley
Chisholm still retains her place as one of the smartest women in London;
that all the scandals once whispered about her have been proved to be
false inventions of her detractors; that as _chatelaine_ of Wroxeter she
is one of the most popular among hostesses; and that her husband, whom
she adores, and whose fame is of worldwide renown, will certainly have a
seat in the next Cabinet.
You, my reader, whom curiosity or necessity takes into Mayfair or
Belgravia, must often have seen a slim, sweet-faced woman, remarkable
for the most wonderful eyes, driving in her neat Victoria, her servants
in dark green liveries, and with the three water-bougets of the
Chisholms upon the silver harness. Beside her there not infrequently
nestles a child with an exquisite face, dark hair, and great, wide-open
eyes that look in wonder on the vast world of London.
You are acquainted with their life-story. They are mother and daughter,
the wife and child of one of the happiest of men, the Right Honourable
Dudley Waldegrave Chisholm, the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign
Affairs.
The End.
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Under-Secretary, by William Le Queux
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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