Diotimos Library · Literary Fiction Collection · English Edition
The Keepers of the People
A Critical Edition of the 1898 Novel
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English Edition · Branch 136 of 254
Chapter V · The Training of Althea · pp. 172–178
The Keepers of the People
p. 175Her fearlessness pleased him; he said nothing; but when she came again, the tigress was behind stronger bars.
When she could ride well, she asked him to take her with him on his night rides. He looked at her, thoughtful, in two minds — it was the first thing she had asked of him, and he was loth to refuse — then he said, “I ride on the business of the people; and I ride far and fast. You will tire.”
“I don’t mind,” said Althea.
When he came next from the great hall to ride out, he found her horse standing by his own, saddled, and waiting, and she herself was ready. They rode at a canter, galloping now and again, to a village, some twenty miles away, and came back as fast. She was broken with weariness; but she ate her supper with him with never a word of it. After that she was his comrade on many rides, galloping along at his side, tireless, and ever ready to talk when they drew rein to breathe their horses. On these rides she learned the country, and saw strange sights. Many a time she sat with her lips set tight to prevent their twitching, while a wretch, guilty of violence, shrieked under the lash; and once she saw from afar with blenching eyes, a sword flash in the moonlight, and a murderer’s head roll on the blood-bedabbled turf.
Prince Ralph looked at her blanched face, when he rode up; laid his hand gently on her arm; and said, “These things must be, child.”
“Yes,” said Althea, with a little sob; “but it’s very horrid.”
On these rides too she became known to the Varandals; and they called her the Golden Lily. The belief was not long springing up among them that she too was a child of Indra, and that the sight of her brought good fortune; so that, even as a woman heavy with child would watch of bright nights if she might see the face of Prince Ralph in the moonlight, and her child be born beautiful, so would men watch to see Althea’s streaming golden hair as she rode fast at his bridle-hand.
Socrates
Reading The Keepers of the People · Book II, Chapter V · The Training of Althea · Book II, Chapter V · The Training of Althea · pp. 172–178
Ask about a concept, passage, contradiction, or connection.
Socrates will begin with this book and its sources.About This Reading Edition
Edgar Jepson’s The Keepers of the People begins as a late-Victorian lost-kingdom romance and becomes an unsettling political argument. Ralph Falcon moves from an English country house to the hidden state of Varandaleel, where laughter, secrecy, violence, education, and the duties of rulers are tested against one another.
Historical Text
The novel was first published in London in 1898 by C. Arthur Pearson. This reading text follows the owner-supplied critical edition, whose copy-text is the Methuen Colonial Library issue of the same year digitised by the Internet Archive. The supplied editorial note records the edition’s corrections, normalisations, limits, and unresolved textual risks.
About This Edition
This English Edition preserves the complete supplied text and apparatus: the introduction, reading guide, key words, plot outline, editorial note, both books and all thirty chapters, and the end notes. Its reader branches end at paragraph boundaries, with the original chapter structure and chapter page references mapped to the 1898 printing.
Rights
Edgar Jepson’s 1898 novel is in the public domain. The introduction, reader’s guide, key words, outline, editorial note, notes, editorial arrangement, and design of the supplied edition are © 2026 Diotimos Editions.