Diotimos Library · Literary Fiction Collection · English Edition
The Keepers of the People
A Critical Edition of the 1898 Novel
Swipe or use the arrow keys.
English Edition · Branch 206 of 254
Chapter XV · The Courting of Vashti · pp. 285–300
The Keepers of the People
p. 293A little sob burst from her; and he kissed her arm again. As he kissed it, his grip loosened a little; she snatched it free; sprang up, and fled down the garden on swift, light feet.
“To-morrow! Here!” he cried after her. She paused, turned back her troubled face towards him for a breath, and vanished between the trees.
Lord Lisdor rose in a fine glow, the touch of her flesh warm and sweet on his lips. He never thought of the laws of hospitality, of the danger, that she was the fierce old Prince’s best beloved; he only grieved faintly that her voice would never fall pleasant on his ears, and at the slow hours that lay between him and the sight of her. Then the memory of the kisses warmed him again, and he came to his lodging with a joyful heart.
On the next evening Vashti did not dine in the great hall, nor did she come into Prince Raleigh’s rooms, when Lord Lisdor sat with him later. His spirits fell; but he went to the marble seat as soon as the old Prince had gone to rest, and waited for her. She did not come; and he sat, till long after midnight, mocked by a hundred fancies. A hundred times he heard her light footfall on the grass, a hundred times he heard the rustle of her robe; and as often as the branches or leaves that had mocked his fancy, grew still, his heart sank. He went at last to his lodgings in a fear that he had frightened her away for ever.
This check inflamed his fancy to a passion. The next day he was gloomy and restless; he was parched with a thirst for her; and twice he tried to make his way to her rooms to plead with her. Locked doors, or inexorable guards barred his passage. He eased his heart somewhat by a long ride; but when he came to dinner and found that she was not there, he could eat little, and drank steadily. Althea’s quick eye saw that something was amiss with him: she had seen him in love before: and looking for the cause of his trouble, she found it in the absence of Vashti. Lord Lisdor went to the trysting-place; and came away from it, unmet, on dragging feet.
Socrates
Reading The Keepers of the People · Book II, Chapter XV · The Courting of Vashti · Book II, Chapter XV · The Courting of Vashti · pp. 285–300
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.