Clara Levesque Author:William Gilbert General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1872 Original Publisher: Hurst and Blackett Subjects: Fiction / Classics Fiction / Literary Literary Criticism / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missi... more »ng text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: 36 CHAPTER III. A SURPRISE. FT would be difficult to imagine a greater -- change than that which took place in our method of life at the termination of our four years' residence in Dresden. During that time we seemed utterly unknown]; and now, to a certain extent, we were known to the whole of the elite of society in the city. I say to a certain extent, for my real position was still kept secret from all with whom I was acquainted. I had passed as a widow in good circumstances ; and as, without vanity, I may say I was not destitute of personal attractions, the reader may easilyimagine I did not remain without offers -- all of which, it is needless to say, I unhesitatingly refused. At first, perhaps, this might have excited some sort of curiosity, but it soon died away. At length people began to say that I had been so fondly attached to the husband I had lost, that it was impossible for me to entertain the idea of marrying another, and I was merely looked upon as an ultra-romantic Englishwoman; for somehow, in the eyes of foreigners, all Englishwomen seem endowed, more or less, with a strong spice of romance. How surprised would they have been had they known the real circumstances of my case -- that, so far from grieving for the loss of my husband, I held his very memory in abhorrence and contempt! I could say more -- that I never thought of him without a feeling of degradation that I had been united to so worthless and contemptible a man. If little...« less