She was able to impose upon herself perhaps more successfully than on other people, who failed to see that a rich stepmother who “entertained,” and did her duty by society and marriageable maidens, was other than a highly estimable person, or that, as far as Alma herself was concerned, her devotion to a girlish ideal had ever stood in the way of many flirtations and a very patent enjoyment of her ballroom triumphs and successes. The excuse she made to the world was her father’s second marriage to herself the impossibility of marrying the “only man she had ever really loved,” and a kind of pride in the thought of reclaiming a poor fellow who loved her from the error of his ways. Spoilt as a child, indulged in her wilful, wayward fancies as the only daughter of a long-widowed parent, much petted and admired in the set in which she moved, she had elected to consider herself an ill-used and unhappy creature, and had impulsively and hurriedly married a man who had come to her one day with a plea to “save him from going to the devil, for she was about the only woman who could do it.” WHEN Alma Belmont arrived at Bristowe she had done about as foolish a thing as any young woman of four-and-twenty could have done in the way of marring a life that had been only too pleasant. ‘Tis night! how still the bush has grown,Ĭross Currents by Mrs. “An Incident Out West” ~ Frank Rikchardson Last Cruise of John Maudesley ~ Louis Becke The Sleeping Sickness of Lui the Kanaka ~ Lala Fisher GO TO Project Gutenberg Australia HOME PAGE Of the Project Gutenberg Australia Licence which may be viewed online. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms This eBook is made available at no cost and with almost no restrictions Be sure to check theĬopyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing this
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