I. THE INMATES OF RAYNHAM ABBEY

II.  Showing how the fates selected the fourteenth birthday to try
          the Strength of the system

III.  THE MAGIAN CONFLICT

IV.  ARSON

V. ADRIAN PLIES HIS HOOK

VI.  JUVENILE STRATAGEMS

VII.  DAPHNE’S BOWER

VIII.  THE BITTER CUP

IX.  A FINE DISTINCTION

X. RICHARD PASSES THROUGH HIS PRELIMINARY ORDEAL, AND IS THE OCCASION OF AN APHORISM

XI.  In which the last act of the Bakewell comedy is closed in
          A letter

CHAPTER I

Some years ago a book was published under the title of “The Pilgrim’s Scrip.”  It consisted of a selection of original aphorisms by an anonymous gentleman, who in this bashful manner gave a bruised heart to the world.

He made no pretension to novelty.  “Our new thoughts have thrilled dead bosoms,” he wrote; by which avowal it may be seen that youth had manifestly gone from him, since he had ceased to be jealous of the ancients.  There was a half-sigh floating through his pages for those days of intellectual coxcombry, when ideas come to us affecting the embraces of virgins, and swear to us they are ours alone, and no one else have they ever visited:  and we believe them.

For an example of his ideas of the sex he said: 

“I expect that Woman will be the last thing civilized by Man.”

Some excitement was produced in the bosoms of ladies by so monstrous a scorn of them.

One adventurous person betook herself to the Heralds’ College, and there ascertained that a Griffin between two Wheatsheaves, which stood on the title-page of the book, formed the crest of Sir Austin Absworthy Bearne Feverel, Baronet, of Raynham Abbey, in a certain Western county folding Thames:  a man of wealth and honour, and a somewhat lamentable history.

The outline of the baronet’s story was by no means new.  He had a wife, and he had a friend.  His marriage was for love; his wife was a beauty; his friend was a sort of poet.  His wife had his whole heart, and his friend all his confidence.  When he selected Denzil Somers from among his college chums, it was not on account of any similarity of disposition between them, but from his intense worship of genius, which made him overlook the absence of principle in his associate for the sake of such brilliant promise.