The Project Gutenberg EBook of Man and Wife, by Wilkie Collins

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Title: Man and Wife

Author: Wilkie Collins

Release Date: February 21, 2006 [EBook #1586]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MAN AND WIFE ***

Produced by James Rusk and David Widger

MAN AND WIFE

by Wilkie Collins

PROLOGUE.--THE IRISH MARRIAGE.

Part the First.

THE VILLA AT HAMPSTEAD.

I.

ON a summer's morning, between thirty and forty years ago, two girls
were crying bitterly in the cabin of an East Indian passenger ship,
bound outward, from Gravesend to Bombay.

They were both of the same age--eighteen. They had both, from childhood
upward, been close and dear friends at the same school. They were now
parting for the first time--and parting, it might be, for life.

The name of one was Blanche. The name of the other was Anne.

Both were the children of poor parents, both had been pupil-teachers at
the school; and both were destined to earn their own bread. Personally
speaking, and socially speaking, these were the only points of
resemblance between them.

Blanche was passably attractive and passably intelligent, and no more.
Anne was rarely beautiful and rarely endowed. Blanche's parents
were worthy people, whose first consideration was to secure, at any
sacrifice, the future well-being of their child. Anne's parents were
heartless and depraved. Their one idea, in connection with their
daughter, was to speculate on her beauty, and to turn her abilities to
profitable account.

The girls were starting in life under widely different conditions.
Blanche was going to India, to be governess in the household of a Judge,
under care of the Judge's wife. Anne was to wait at home until the
first opportunity offered of sending her cheaply to Milan. There, among
strangers, she was to be perfected in the actress's and the singer's
art; then to return to England, and make the fortune of her family on
the lyric stage.

Such were the prospects of the two as they sat together in the cabin of
the Indiaman locked fast in each other's arms, and crying bitterly.
The whispered farewell talk exchanged between them