A Wayward Woman, (Volume 3) (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1879. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER V. The Duchess of Hammersmith had been pleased to say that the painter's wife had lost caste by her marriage; that she ho longer enjoyed the same social status; that she was exiled from the paradise of fashion to which she had once as of right belonged. It might be so; yet within a year or two of their settlement in town, Winnifred was established as a leader of society, a queen having an extensive kingdom with limits that reached beyond the upper ten thousand, and embraced all manner of men. That she had drifted into this was to be accounted for in more ways than one. Those who still disliked her--not, it must be confessed, a very numerous band--attributed it to inevitable backsliding. The old habit was reasserting itself they said. She was of the world, worldly, a frivolous pleasureseeking woman, whose feverish thirst for excitement nothing but a continual whirl of excitement could assuage. Guy Greatorex was one of the loudest of these. He had always laughed to scorn the notion that she would settle down permanently into a quiet hum-drum life. In the first blush of married happiness she might pretend to prefer it; but such abnegation could not be expected to endure for long. He had given her but twelve months. What if 'abstention, had lasted a little longer? The relapse had come, as it had been anticipated. Already was she launched into the old grooves. Very soon she would be known and be notorious as one of the fastest and gayest matrons of the town. But Greatorex and men who thought with him were wrong. Winnifred re-entered society more on her husband, s account than her own. Possibly she was not entirely free from that desire to be feted, followed, and made much of, which in a greater or lesser degree is the natural heritage of every daughter ...