Beadle's Dime New York Library, No. 951

Detective Fleet of London; Or, Unmasking the Conspirators This serial melodrama by A. P. Morris, Jr., follows competing suitors for Pauline Herndon's hand. Set at a grand estate outside Philadelphia, it opens with Pauline preparing flowers to receive her lover, Victor Hassan, who seeks her father Calvert Herndon's blessing for marriage. Hassan's proposal succeeds—Herndon approves his suit and permits Pauline to choose her own husband. Immediately after Hassan departs, the dark-eyed English guest Hallison Blair encounters Pauline and makes his own passionate declaration of love, promising her wealth and a grand home across the sea. Pauline emphatically rejects him, revealing her engagement to Hassan. Blair responds with barely veiled threats, declaring he will make her his wife through any means available. After his departure, Pauline confides her happiness and distress to her father, who reveals Blair descends from English nobility—his father was an Earl—but favors Hassan regardless.