Circumstances such as these seemed to become personal possessions and even to lighten somewhat the burden of toil.
Rosalie Vanderpoel married an Englishman of title, and part of the story of her married life forms my prologue.

Hers was of the early international marriages, and the republican mind had not yet adjusted itself to all that such alliances might imply.

It was yet ingenuous, imaginative and confiding in such matters.

A baronetcy and a manor house reigning over an old English village and over villagers in possible smock frocks, presented elements of picturesque dignity to people whose intimacy with such allurements had been limited by the novels of Mrs.
Oliphant and other writers.

The most ordinary little anecdotes in which vicarages, gamekeepers, and dowagers figured, were exciting in these early days.