I must either die or accept the royal hand which was extended to me; and I would not die yet, I have still so many claims on life, and it has hitherto made good so few of them! Ah, my poor, hapless existence! what has it been, but an endless chain of renunciations and deprivations, of leafless flowers and dissolving views?
It is true, I have never learned to know what is usually called misfortune.

But is there a greater misfortune than not to be happy; than to sigh through a life without wish or hope; to wear away the endless, weary days of an existence without delight, yet surrounded with luxury and splendor ?" "You were not unfortunate, and yet you are an orphan, fatherless and motherless ?" "I lost my mother so early that I scarcely knew her.

And when my father died I could hardly consider it other than a blessing, for he had never shown himself a father, but always only as a harsh, tyrannical master to me." "But you were married ?" "Married!" said Catharine, with a melancholy smile.

"That is to say, my father sold me to a gouty old man, on whose couch I spent a few comfortless, awfully wearisome years, till Lord Neville made me a rich widow.

But what did my independence avail me, when I had bound myself in new fetters?
Hitherto I had been the slave of my father, of my husband; now I was the slave of my wealth.