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 238 of 254
Chapter XIX · Althea Intervenes · pp. 347–358
The Keepers of the People
p. 347CHAPTER XIX
ALTHEA INTERVENES
The sudden sight of Prince Ralph and Ruth lovers, though she had looked to see it, feared to see it, smote Althea with appalling pain. She had scarcely known save from rare, passing fits of jealousy of Ruth, that her child’s fondness for Prince Ralph had grown a woman’s passion: the change, in the months since his awakening kiss, had been subtle and gradual; only now did she know how great it was. She loved and lost in the same moment. She stumbled twice on the stairs; came into the Golden Rooms half blinded; and falling face downward on her bed, lay quivering. Her heart ached for the loss of him with pang on pang; burned against Ruth; and raged at Fortune on whom alone she could throw fairly the blame. A crushing sense of her helplessness, in the face of this natural falling out of the matter, ground her down: she cursed the day that had brought Ruth to Varandaleel to supplant her. But her anguish, poignant and piercing, outweighed her anger, wringing from her, now and again, a harsh, rasping sob that was little short of a convulsion. After a while the one thought, that she had lost Prince Ralph, alone filled her mind, and weighed on her heart, an intolerable, crushing burden.
Ruth came, not yet awakened from her dream, straight to her, to see if she were awake, and bid her share her joy. She found her still lying face downwards, the room a blaze of light, and said gently, “Are you awake, Althea?”
Althea jerked herself up, resting her weight on her left hand, gazed at her with eyes that began slowly to burn: utterly unstrung, the instinct of the wounded to wound was strong upon her: and she cried in a weak, hoarse voice, “What do you want here? Isn’t it enough that you have robbed me? Do you come to boast of it to me?”
“Robbed you! How? What do you mean?” cried Ruth, awakened and astounded.
“Yes — robbed me! Robbed me of Ralph,” said Althea in the same toneless voice of extreme suffering.
“Robbed you of Ralph!” said Ruth in a voice that hushed, as the knowledge of this terrible thing she had done flashed upon her.
Socrates
Reading The Keepers of the People · Book II, Chapter XIX · Althea Intervenes · Book II, Chapter XIX · Althea Intervenes · pp. 347–358
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.