Transcriber's Notes.
Differences in hyphenation of specific words and missing punctuationhave been rectified where applicable.
Other changes made are noted at the end of the book.
MARGARET MALIPHANT
A Novel
BY
MRS. COMYNS CARR
AUTHOR OF "PAUL CREW'S STORY" ETC.
NEW YORK
HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE
1889
PROLOGUE.
It is twilight upon the marsh: the land at the foot of the hilllies a level of dim monotony, and even the sea beyond is lost inmystery. In the middle of the plain one solitary homestead, withits clump of trees, stands out just a little darker than anything else,and from afar there comes to me the sound of the sea, sweetly lulling,as it has come to me ever since I was a little child. A chillbreeze creeps up among the aspens on the cliff, and for a momentthere steals over me the sense of loneliness of ten years ago, and Iseem to see once more a tall, dark figure thread his way down amongthe trees, and disappear forever onto the wide plain. But this isonly for a moment; for as I look, the past lies stretched, as theplain is stretched, before me—vivid, yet distant as a dream. Thewhite mill detaches itself upon the dark hill-side, the cattle restupon the quiet marsh; and still the sound of the sea comes to me,tenderly murmuring, as it did when I was a happy child, and tellsme of a present that is wide and fair as, above the lonely land, thecoming night is blue and vast.
CHAPTER I.
My sister Joyce is older than I am. At the time of which I amthinking she was twenty-one, and I was barely nineteen. We werethe only children of Farmer Maliphant of Knellestone Grange, inthe county of Sussex. The Maliphants were an old family. Theirnames were on the oldest tombstones in the graveyard of theabbey, whose choir and ruined transepts were all that was leftstanding of a splendid church that had been the mother of a greatmonastery, and of many other churches in the popish days, whenour town was a feature in English history. I am not sure that ourfamily dated as far back as that. I had read of knights in helmetsand coats of mail skirmishing beneath the city wall, of which therewere still fragments standing, and of gallant captains bringing theKing's galleys to port in the bay that had become marsh-land, and Ihoped that there might have been Maliphants too, riding up anddown the hill under the gate-ways that were now ivy-grown; but Iam afraid that, even if the family had been in existence at the time,they would only have been archers, shooting their arrows from behindthe turrets on the hill.
At all events—to leave romancing alone—Maliphants had ownedor rented land upon the Udimore hills and the downs of Brede formore than three hundred years, and it must have been nearly aslong as that that they had lived in the old stone house overlookingthe Romney Marsh. For almost all our land had been a manor ofthe old abbey, and had been granted to my father's family at thedissolution of the monasteries in 1540, and it was not