The Story of Charles Strange A Novel Author:Mrs. Henry Wood General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1901 Original Publisher: Macmillan Subjects: Fiction / General Fiction / Classics Fiction / Historical Fiction / Literary Literary Criticism / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrat... more »ions and there may be typos or missing 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: CHAPTER III. MR. SERJEANT STILLINGFAR. Gloucester Place, Portman Square. Ie one of its handsome houses -- as they are considered to be by persons of moderate desires -- dwelt its owner, Major Carlen. Major Carlen was a man of the world ; a man of fashion. When the house had fallen to him some years before by the will of a relative, with a substantial sum of money to keep it up, he professed to despise ths house to his brother-officers and other acquaintances of the great world. He would have preferred a house in Belgrave Square, or in G-rosvenor Place, or in Park Lane. Major Carlen was accustomed to speak largely ; it was his way. Since then, he had retired from the army, and was master of himself, his time and his amusements. Major Carlen was fond of clubs, fond of card-playing, fond of dinners; fond, indeed, of whatever constitutes fast life. His house in Gloucester Place was handsomely furnished, replete with comfort, and possessed every reasonable requisite for social happiness -- even to a wife. And Major Carlen's wife was Jessie, once Mrs. Strange, once Mrs. Heriot. It is quite a problem why some women cannot marry at all, try to do so as they may, whilst others become wives three and four times over, and without much seeking of their own. Mrs. Heriot (to give her her first name) wasone of these. In very little more than a year after her first husband died, she married her second; in not any more than a year af...« less