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 40 of 254
Chapter II · Ralph Falcon Makes the Acquaintance of His Cousins · pp. 18–28
The Keepers of the People
p. 18CHAPTER II
RALPH FALCON MAKES THE ACQUAINTANCE OF HIS COUSINS
Ralph Falcon had fallen into a pleasant land; and the month was May. In it no one acted but on the fancy of the moment, and no binding to times and seasons made pleasure a burden. Clever, amusing people came down from London for a day or two, and went away. But for the most part, the five of them were alone; and Lady Lisdor was the centre round which the little group circled; Althea might go wandering with Alrasch, one of Ralph Falcon’s bloodhounds which she had made her pet; Lord Lisdor and the Russian might play lawn tennis or picquet; Ralph Falcon might sit for hours, thinking and smoking on the terrace, or betake himself to the village and fields, watching the work and lives of the rustics; but sooner or later they found themselves all gathered together round Lady Lisdor.
She was a gracious creature, for the most part grave with eyes wistful for the great things life owed her fine beauty. For the most part, too, she was silent; when she spoke, her speech was graver than her years, the speech of a woman whom life had taught to think; and she spent much of her time with books. Her life before her marriage had been hard, and of a narrow range; marriage had unbarred the world to her; and she was for ever eager to learn more of human nature, of the springs of human action, and the essentials of human happiness. Of art and music she knew nothing; and they appealed little to her fine intelligence; she esteemed the looking at pictures and the hearing of operas agreeable diversions; but with man, his doings and his dreams, her preoccupation was unceasing.
Socrates
Reading The Keepers of the People · Book I, Chapter II · Ralph Falcon Makes the Acquaintance of His Cousins · Book I, Chapter II · Ralph Falcon Makes the Acquaintance of His Cousins · pp. 18–28
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.