



Produced by Al Haines








  TEN DEGREES
  BACKWARD


  BY

  ELLEN THORNEYCROFT FOWLER

  AUTHOR OF "HER LADYSHIP'S CONSCIENCE,"
  "CONCERNING ISABEL CARNABY," ETC., ETC.



  NEW YORK
  GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY




  Copyright, 1915,
  BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY




  CONTENTS

  I. I, Reginald Kingsnorth
  II. Restham Manor
  III. Frank
  IV. Fay
  V. The First Miracle
  VI. St. Luke's Summer
  VII. The Gift
  VIII. Love Among the Ruins
  IX. Things Great and Small
  X. A Birthday Present
  XI. In June
  XII. Shakspere and the Musical Glasses
  XIII. The Garden of Dreams
  XIV. Annabel's Warning
  XV. Darkening Skies
  XVI. A Sorrowful Springtime
  XVII. Desolation
  XVIII. The New Dean
  XIX. A Surprise
  XX. Isabel, Née Carnaby
  XXI. The Great War
  XXII. The Last of the Wildacres
  XXIII. The Peace of God
  XXIV. Conclusion




TEN DEGREES BACKWARD



CHAPTER I

I, REGINALD KINGSNORTH

"Reggie, do you remember Wildacre?"

It was with this apparently simple question that Arthur Blathwayte rang
up the curtain on the drama of my life.

That the performance was late in beginning I cannot but admit.  I was
fully forty-two; an age at which the drama of most men's lives are
over--or, at any rate, well on in the third act.  But in my uneventful
existence there had been no drama at all; not even an ineffective
love-affair that could be dignified by the name of a "curtain-raiser."

Of course I had perceived that some women were better looking than
others, and more attractive and easier to get on with.  But I had only
perceived this in a scientific, impersonal kind of way: the perception
had in nowise penetrated my inner consciousness or influenced my
existence.  I was the type of person who is described by the populace
as "not a marrying sort," and consequently I had reached the age of
forty-two without either marrying or wishing to marry.

I admit that I had not been thrown into circumstances conducive to the
cultivation of the tender passion; my sister Annabel had seen to that;
but no sister--be she even as powerful as Annabel herself--can prevent
a man from falling in love if he be so minded, nor from seeking out for
himself a woman to fall in love with if none are thrown in his way.
But I had not been so minded; therefore Annabel's precautions had
triumphed.

Annabel was one of that by no means inconsiderable number of women who
constantly say they desire and think they desire one thing, while they
are actually wishing and working for the exact opposite.  For instance,
she was always remarking how much she wished that I would marry--and
what a mistake it was for a man like myself to remain single--and what
a pity it was for the baronetcy to die out.  And she said this in all
sincerity: there was never any conscious humbug about Annabel.  Yet if
by any chance a marriageable maiden came my way, Annabel hustled her
off as she hustled off the peacocks when they came into the
flower-garden.  My marriage was in theory one of Annabel's fondest
hopes: in practice a catastrophe to be averted at all costs.

My sister was five years my senior, and had mothered me ever since my
mother's death when I was a boy.  There were only the two of us, and
surely no man ever had a better sister than I had.  In my childhood she
stood between me and danger; in my