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 89 of 254
Chapter IX · Althea Breaks With Her Mother · pp. 87–98
The Keepers of the People
p. 97When Lady Hammersmith returned, and came into that atmosphere of terror, it affected her to an equal fear. All that she had read or heard of children committing suicide filled her mind; she saw dreadful visions of Althea hanging, or Althea with her throat cut; and shuddered at the thought of what the enemies of the Causes would say about her death.
She saw the moral progress of years swept away by an accident.
She called to Althea for a while, and getting no answer bade the men-servants break open the door. The lock was forced with little trouble, and the door flew open, disclosing only darkness, and Alrasch growling fiercely. The servants fell back, and were discussing how to force this new barrier, when the door of the inner room opened, and Althea, in her dressing-gown, standing on the threshold, said, “I do not know how I am to get to sleep if you will make this noise. Come in here, Alrasch! And be quiet!”
The dog obeyed the summons; the door shut; and the key turned in the lock. Every one in the group looked foolish in their various fashion; and it began to melt away. Lady Hammersmith, in too great a relief from her fear to be properly angry, went to her room discussing with Miss Blayne the proper method of dealing with Althea, and bewailing the press of work from the Society for the Penalisation of Vice which would prevent her devoting herself to the immediate amelioration of her child.
Socrates
Reading The Keepers of the People · Book I, Chapter IX · Althea Breaks With Her Mother · Book I, Chapter IX · Althea Breaks With Her Mother · pp. 87–98
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.