Mary Elizabeth Braddon epub The Lovels of Arden: A Novel (Classic Reprint)

Thr kmps of the Great Northern Termions at King sC ross had not long been lighted when a cab deposited a young lady and her luggage at the departure platform. It was anO ctober twilight, cold and gray, and the place had a cheerless and dismal aspect to that solitary young traveler, to whom English life and anE nglish atmosphere were strange just now. She had been seven years abroad, in a school near Paris; rather an expensive seminary, where the number of pupils was limited, the mastera and mistresses, learned in divers modern accomplishments, numerous, and the dietary of foreign slops and messes without stint. Doll and gray as theE nglish sky seemed to her, and dreary as was the aspect of London in October, this girl was glad to return to her native land. She had felt herself very lonely in the French school, forgotten and deserted by her own kindred a creature to be pitied; and hers was a nature to which pity was a torture. Other girls had gone home toE ngland for their holidays ;but vacation after vacation went by, and every occasion brought Clarissa Lovel the same coldly worded letter from her father, telling her that it was not convenient for him to receive her at home, that he had heard with pleasure of her ])rogress, and that experienced people, with whom he had conferred, had agreed with him that any interruption to the regular course of her studies could not fail to be a disadvantage to her in the future. They are all going home except me, papa, she wrote piteously on one occasion, and I feel as if I were different from them somehow. Do let me come home to Arden for this one year. I dont think my school-fellows believe me when I talk of home, and the gardens, and the dear old park. I have seen it in their faces, and you can not think how hard it is to bear. And I want to see you, papa. You must not fancy that, because I speak of these things, I am n(Typographical errors above are due to OCR software and don't occur in the book.)