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 75 of 254
Chapter VII · Lady Hammersmith Protests · pp. 67–76
The Keepers of the People
p. 76“Ruth, I cannot argue the matter. As an English mother—”
“As an English mother your only concern with Althea is to spoil her sport,” Lord Lisdor broke in, with intent to enrage.
Althea looked at him gratefully.
Lady Hammersmith did not accept his challenge; and a gloom fell on them which broke the flow of their talk. After dinner Lady Hammersmith kept Althea by her ostentatiously protecting side; but plunging hotly into a discussion with Miss Freshington, she forgot her for a while, and Althea fled.
In the smoking-room Lord Lisdor said to his cousin, “Your father’s estate seems to be run on rum lines, what with killing missionaries, and making people dumb, and that sort of thing, don’t you know?”
“I suppose it seems strange to you; but I have grown up among it. The people are Eastern; and the methods are Eastern. The result is good,” said Ralph Falcon.
Lord Lisdor gathered from his tone that he had no wish to talk of it, and asked no further question.
Socrates
Reading The Keepers of the People · Book I, Chapter VII · Lady Hammersmith Protests · Book I, Chapter VII · Lady Hammersmith Protests · pp. 67–76
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.