Mirk Abbey: Volume 2

by James Payn

MARY," said Lady Lisgard gravely, when her attendant had closed the door behind her, "I want to have a little serious talk with you to-night." "As you please, my Lady," returned Mistress Forest, in a tone which the other, did not fail to it was a very respectful tone—a more humble one even than she was ordinarily wont to use—but there was a certain deliberation and set resolve about it too, which expressed as decidedly, as though she had used the "I am ready to listen, madam; but I know very well what you are going to ask me, and I have made up my mind already to answer 'No.'" "Mary," continued my Lady earnestly, but not without a tremor in her kind soft voice, "come and sit here on the sofa beside me, and let us not be mistress and maid tonight, but only friends."

76 pages, Paperback

Published February 12, 1866

About the author

James Payn was an English novelist and editor of The Cornhill Magazine.

Payn's father, William Payn (1774/5 - 1840), was clerk to the Thames Commissioners and at one time treasurer to the county of Berkshire. Payn was educated at Eton, and afterwards entered the Military Academy at Woolwich; but his health was not equal to the demands of a military career, and he proceeded in 1847 to Trinity College, Cambridge. He was among the most popular men of his time, and served as president of the Union. Before going to Cambridge he had published some verses in Leigh Hunt's Journal, and while still an undergraduate put forth a volume of Stories from Boccaccio in 1852, and in 1853 a volume of Poems.

In the same year he left Cambridge, he met and shortly afterwards married Miss Louisa Adelaide Edlin (b. 1830 or 1831), sister of Judge Sir Peter Edlin, later chairman of the London Quarter Sessions. They had nine children, the third of whom, Alicia Isabel (died 1898), married The Times editor George Earle Buckle.