Author: J. Sheridan Le Fanu
Release Date: December 3, 2003 [EBook #10377]
[Date last updated: January 22, 2005]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** Start of this project gutenberg
EBOOK the evil guest ***
Produced by Suzanne Shell, Beginners Projects, Mary
Meehan and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
By J. Sheridan LeFanu
1895
“When Lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth
Sin: and Sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth
Death.”
About sixty years ago, and somewhat more than twenty
miles from the ancient town of Chester, in a southward
direction, there stood a large, and, even then, an
old-fashioned mansion-house. It lay in the midst
of a demesne of considerable extent, and richly wooded
with venerable timber; but, apart from the somber
majesty of these giant groups, and the varieties of
the undulating ground on which they stood, there was
little that could be deemed attractive in the place.
A certain air of neglect and decay, and an indescribable
gloom and melancholy, hung over it. In darkness,
it seemed darker than any other tract; when the moonlight
fell upon its glades and hollows, they looked spectral
and awful, with a sort of churchyard loneliness; and
even when the blush of the morning kissed its broad
woodlands, there was a melancholy in the salute that
saddened rather than cheered the heart of the beholder.
This antique, melancholy, and neglected place, we
shall call, for distinctness sake, Gray Forest.
It was then the property of the younger son of a nobleman,
once celebrated for his ability and his daring, but
who had long since passed to that land where human
wisdom and courage avail naught. The representative
of this noble house resided at the family mansion
in Sussex, and the cadet, whose fortunes we mean to
sketch in these pages, lived upon the narrow margin
of an encumbered income, in a reserved and unsocial
discontent, deep among the solemn shadows of the old
woods of Gray Forest.
The Hon. Richard Marston was now somewhere between
forty and fifty years of age—perhaps nearer
the latter; he still, however, retained, in an eminent
degree, the traits of manly beauty, not the less remarkable
for its unquestionably haughty and passionate character.
He had married a beautiful girl, of good family, but
without much money, somewhere about eighteen years
before; and two children, a son and a daughter, had
been the fruit of this union. The boy, Harry
Marston, was at this time at Cambridge; and his sister,
scarcely fifteen, was at home with her parents, and
under the training of an accomplished governess, who
had been recommended to them by a noble relative of
Mrs. Marston. She was a native of France, but
