Every Christmas the young Marlows leap over twelve lighted candles: "If you clear them all, you will be lucky all the year; if you put out any one, you will be unlucky in that month of the year to which it corresponds; if you put out the first, you will be unlucky in January, the second in February, and so on." When her turn comes to leap Gillian extinguishes three candles and it soon becomes clear that a year of grief and misfortune is about to unfold inexorably before her...

"What!" cries her uncle, dropping knife and fork with a clatter on his plate; "what! do you mean to say," in an astounded voice, "that you - you have made up your mind to - to take him after all?"

"I have not the chance," she answers, with a pallid smile; "he will not take me. He says" - making herself repeat his words with accurate distinctness - "he says that he would rather be flayed alive than marry me!"

"God bless my soul!" cries the Squire, bounding off his chair and on to his short legs, and utterly forsaking his stiffening bacon and his cooling egg.

"He thought," continues the girl, in the same carefully distinct voice, "that I should be too dear a bargain, even though backed by my £200,000."

About the Author

Rhoda Broughton (29 November 1840 - 5 June 1920) was a novelist and short story writer. Her sophisticated tales were hugely popular and widely read at the turn of the 19th Century.