The Handsome Quaker and Other Stories Author:Katharine Tynan General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1902 Original Publisher: A. H. Bullen Subjects: Irish fiction Fiction / General Fiction / Literary Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this ... more »book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: A CASTLE IN SPAIN Miss Honoea Desmond was very proud of her arched foot, her little ears and her long slender hands, because those features of hers were especially patrician. The people shook their heads over Honora's pride, calling her by her name behind her back, as only the most vulgar had ever presumed to before her face. By and by it would be " ould Honora " ; but though Miss Desmond would never see thirty-eight again, there was something of youth and grace about her that forbade the cruel adjective except to the least sensitive. Honora was still a very pretty woman. Milky skin with a few golden freckles on it. Dark blue eyes. Bronze-coloured hair with a ripple where it was drawn back from the temples. Fine haughty little features and a stately carriage. These had often made the sympathetic stranger curious over the post-mistress of Coolafin; for Honora filled this not very magnificent position. The peasants, to give them their due, admitted that Honora had a right to hold her head high. Sure every one knew that she was descended in a straight line without a break from one of the great Munster Fitzmaurices who had lost everything in the Desmond rebellion. Only the ill-natured ventured to say that Honora's grandmother had sung and sold ballads in the streets of Cork. What if she had then ? She wasn't the first lady who had come low in the world, aye, and died in that terrible place, the poor-house, for the matter of that. Yet for all her pride Honora was not one to swing uncomfortably between heave...« less