What Will He Do with It?, Volume 1

"[T]he story of the angelic little Sophy and her grandfather, who is known as Gentleman Waife and who is forced to earn his living as an actor and to make his grandchild, too, appear on the stage amidst a group of itinerant actors under the guidance of the tyrannic Lorenzo Rugge. One day, two young men, Lionel Haughton and his friend, a painter, notice the young girl, and the artist wants to portray her. So much so that he is ready to pay three pounds for the privilege, a sum of money which Gentleman Waife uses to secure his independence from the wrathful and unforgiving Rugge. This tyrant suspects a shameful mystery somewhere in Waife’s past life, and he is ready to unravel the truth. Doing this, he falls in with the arch-scoundrel Jasper Losely and the mysterious Arabelle Crane, who looked after Sophy when she was a toddler. In the meantime, Lionel Haughton makes the acquaintance of a distant relative of his, the proud and reserved Guy Darrell, a man of great wealth, whose biography seems to bear the mark of a deep disappointment. As the story unfolds, more and more characters appear on the stage, and by and by, sometimes in flashbacks, at other times in conversations, their relations will become clear and many a mystery will be unveiled ... the main motif is the difference between a man who sacrificed everything in order to keep his family’s good name unsullied and another who sacrificed his own name in order to give somebody he loves another chance. "--From Goodreads.com website, viewed October 31, 2023.