The Project Gutenberg EBook of White Lies, by Charles Reade

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Title: White Lies

Author: Charles Reade

Release Date: May 16, 2006 [EBook #2472]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHITE LIES ***

Produced by Donald Lainson

WHITE LIES

By Charles Reade

CHAPTER I.

Towards the close of the last century the Baron de Beaurepaire lived
in the chateau of that name in Brittany. His family was of prodigious
antiquity; seven successive barons had already flourished on this spot
when a younger son of the house accompanied his neighbor the Duke of
Normandy in his descent on England, and was rewarded by a grant of
English land, on which he dug a mote and built a chateau, and called it
Beaurepaire (the worthy Saxons turned this into Borreper without delay).
Since that day more than twenty gentlemen of the same lineage had held
in turn the original chateau and lands, and handed them down to their
present lord.

Thus rooted in his native Brittany, Henri Lionel Marie St. Quentin de
Beaurepaire was as fortunate as any man can be pronounced before he
dies. He had health, rank, a good income, a fair domain, a goodly
house, a loving wife, and two lovely young daughters, all veneration and
affection. Two months every year he visited the Faubourg St. Germain and
the Court. At both every gentleman and every lacquey knew his name, and
his face: his return to Brittany after this short absence was celebrated
by a rustic fete.

Above all, Monsieur de Beaurepaire possessed that treasure of treasures,
content. He hunted no heart-burns. Ambition did not tempt him; why
should he listen to long speeches, and court the unworthy, and descend
to intrigue, for so precarious and equivocal a prize as a place in the
Government, when he could be De Beaurepaire without trouble or loss of
self-respect? Social ambition could get little hold of him; let parvenus
give balls half in doors, half out, and light two thousand lamps,
and waste their substance battling and manoeuvring for fashionable
distinction; he had nothing to gain by such foolery, nothing to lose by
modest living; he was the twenty-ninth Baron of Beaurep