Love's Logic Author:Anthony Hope Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: MISS GLADWIN'S CHANCE Chapter One OLD Tom Gladwin was not a man to whom you volunteered advice. He had made an immense deal of money for himself, and peopl... more »e who have done that generally like also to manufacture their own advice on their own premises; perhaps it is better done that way, perhaps there's just a prejudice in favor of the home trade-mark. Anyhow, old Tom needed no suggestions from outside. You said, "Yes, Sir Thomas," or "Of course not, Sir Thomas," or "Certainly, Sir Thomas." At all events, you limited your remarks to something like that if you were — as I was — a young solicitor trying to keep his father's connection together, of which Sir Thomas's affairs and the business of the Worldstone Park estate formed a considerable and lucrative portion. But everybody was in the same story about him — secretary, bailiff, stud-groom, gardener, butler — yes, butler, although Sir Thomas had confessedly never tasted champagne till he was forty, whereas Gilson had certainly been weaned on it. Even MissNettie Tyler, when she came on the scene, had the good sense to accept Sir Thomas's version of her heart's desire; neither had she much cause to quarrel with his reading, since it embraced Sir Thomas himself and virtually the whole of his worldly possessions. He was worth perhaps half-a-million pounds in money, and the net rent-roll of Worldstone was ten thousand, even after you had dressed it up and curled its hair, for all the world as if it were a suburban villa instead of an honest, self-respecting country gentleman's estate, which ought to have been run to pay three per cent. But the newcomers will not take land seriously; they leave that as a prospect for their descendants when the ready money, the city-made money, has melted away. So I took his instructions for his m...« less