The Ladies of Lyndon

Joan McGrath is a Toronto Board of Education library consultant.

Agatha, the Lady of Lyndon, had been carefully reared to make a great match. When she became the bride of Sir John Clewer, all her parents’ dearest wishes were accomplished; but their plans, though excellent to a point, failed to take into account Agatha’s wilful heart. Long before, as a schoolroom miss, Agatha had loved and admired her carefree cousin Gerald, and when he suddenly reappears in her coldly correct life, the facade of the perfect marriage crumbles, and the Lady elopes with her lover. Her unpresentable brother-in-law James has in the meanwhile horrified his family by marrying (very happily and successfully) one of the Lyndon parlour-maids. When he inherits the great estate, his jolly Dolly becomes the startling new Lady of Lyndon. This exquisite comedy of manners and marriage, an earlier work of the author of the celebrated Constant Nymph, is an undeservedly neglected delight.