Excerpt from An English Girl: A Romance My father is dead, and the announcement stayed her at the door, her hands falling to her side, open, as if, though a moment before they would have known their place and have lain upon the two shoulders of the man she was to marry, now, so new a creature did this announcement make him seem, that she had, at least for a moment, to hesitate as to whether he could still belong to her. It was under the definite spell of that feeling that she uttered the words: Oh dear - words that implied more than any thing else tell me all: tell me the worst And he was so sensitive to her moods that he, too, neither made to take her into his arms nor to utter an endearment. I am the richest citizen in the world, for what it's worth, he said, with a flavour of scorn, as if he were quoting the words of a man for whom he had an infinite contempt. She sank down upon one of the hard-seated, fine, mahogany chairs before she uttered the word How But she was unable to furnish any adjective. The situation was beyond her: she could say neither How tremendous How terrible Nor yet How magnificent About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.