Carol Brown, MWS and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) Carol Brown, MWS and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
"The contrast, Volume 2 (of 3)" by Marquess of Constantine Henry Phipps Normanby is a novel written in the early 19th century. It mixes social comedy and political satire with a coastal melodrama of smuggling and a suspected murder. Central figures include the vain but influential magistrate Sir North Saunders, the quick-witted and compassionate Lady Gayland, and the villagers Lucy and George Darnell, whose lives collide with a crafty smuggler and a missing gentleman. Expect sparkling drawing-room repartee alongside tense legal and moral dilemmas.
The opening of this volume follows Sir North, newly active as a justice of the peace, hosting a motley house party where Lady Gayland’s playful wit clashes with the pompous Lord Stayinmore over reform. News arrives of a smuggling gang, a mysterious girl found on the beach, and signs of a violent death; Lady Gayland quietly comforts the distraught Lucy Darnell before the formal examination. In a muddled hearing led by Sir North (prodded by a competent solicitor and a blustering young barrister), George Darnell confesses to striking Churchill in a quarrel but cannot explain the man’s disappearance at sea; he is committed as principal, with the smugglers as accessories. Lucy is sent safely toward home, is reunited with her anguished father at Mayton, and the section closes with family strain and Lucy’s troubled thoughts, setting up the legal and emotional consequences to come. (This is an automatically generated summary.)