RICH RELATIVES
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
THE PASSIONATE ELOPEMENT
CARNIVAL
SINISTER STREET: VOL. I
SINISTER STREET: VOL. II
GUY AND PAULINE
SYLVIA SCARLETT
SYLVIA AND MICHAEL
POOR RELATIONS
THE VANITY GIRL
[Copyright: Martin Secker]
RICH RELATIVES
By COMPTON MACKENZIE
L O N D O N : M A R T I N S E C K E R
NUMBER FIVE JOHN STREET ADELPHI MCMXXI
TO ALICE AND CHRISTOPHER STONE
THIS THEME IN A MINOR
NOVEMBER 15TH, 1920
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter One
IT may have been that the porter at York railway station was irritatedby Sunday duty, or it may have been that the outward signs of wealth inhis client were not conspicuous; whatever the cause, he spoke rudely toher.
Yet Jasmine Grant was not a figure that ought to have aroused theinsolence of a porter, even if he was on Sunday duty. To be sure, herblack clothes were not fashionable; and a journey from the South ofItaly to the North of England, having obliterated what slightpretensions to cut they might once have possessed, had left herdefinitely draggled. Although the news of having to wait nearly fivehours for the train to Spaborough had brought tears of disappointmentinto her eyes, and although the appeal of tears had been spoilt by theirbeing rubbed off with the back of a dusty glove, Jasmine's beauty wasthere all the time—a dark, Southern beauty of jetty lashes curling awayfrom brown eyes starry-hearted; a slim Southern charm of sunburnt,boyish hands. Something she had of a young cypress in moonlight,something of a violoncello, with that voice as deep as her eyes. But forthe porter she was only something of a nuisance, and when she began tolament again the long wait he broke in as rudely as before:
"Now it's not a bit