Excerpt from The Duchess of Powysland, Vol. 1 of 3: A Novel Basil Maclaine, Esquire, of the Board of Trade, laid down the World with the air of a man who has refreshed his soul with the pleasures of good company. And, indeed, he had been revelling, at the cheap rate of sixpence, in the very highest society this realm affords. 'Great dance at the Simpsons' last night, I see, ' he said, taking up his coffee-cup in his other hand; 'and Bertie Montgomery's lost a cool thousand again over that good-for-thing two-year-old he entered for Ascot.' About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art techlogy to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.