The Project Gutenberg eBook, Princess, by Mary Greenway McClelland

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Title: Princess

Author: Mary Greenway McClelland

Release Date: January 18, 2006 [eBook #17545]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PRINCESS***

E-text prepared by Al Haines

American Authors' Series, No. 17.

PRINCESS

by

M. G. McCLELLAND

Author of "Oblivion," "Jean Monteith," "Eleanor Gwynn," Etc.

New York:
United States Book Company
Successors to
John W. Lovell Company
150 Worth St., Cor Mission Place
Copyright, 1886,
by
Henry Holt & Co.

With love and admiration,

I dedicate this book to the memory of my friend,

THOMAS ALEXANDER SEDDON.

PRINCESS.

CHAPTER I.

When the idea of a removal to Virginia was first mooted in the family
of General Percival Smith, ex-Brigadier in the United States service,
it was received with consternation and a perfect storm of disapproval.
The young ladies, Norma and Blanche, rose as one woman--loud in
denunciation, vehement in protest--fell upon the scheme, and verbally
sought to annihilate it. The country! A farm!! The South!!! The
idea was untenable, monstrous. Before their outraged vision floated
pictures whereof the foreground was hideous with cows, and snakes, and
beetles; the middle distance lurid with discomfort, corn-bread, and
tri-weekly mails; the background lowering with solitude, ennui, and
colored servants.

Rusticity, nature, sylvan solitudes, and all that, were exquisite bound
in Russia, with gold lettering and tinted leaves; wonderfully alluring
viewed at leisure with the gallery to one's self, and the light at the
proper angle, charmingly attractive behind the footlights, but in
reality!--to the feeling of these young ladies it could be best
appreciated by those who had been born to it. In their opinion, they,
themselves, had been born to something vastly superior, so they
rebelled and made themselves disagreeable; hoping to mitigate the gloom
of the future by intensifying that of the present.

Their mother, whose heart yearned over her offspring, essayed to
comfort them, casting daily and