Purple and Homespun; A Novel (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. 1908. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER IX VICTORIA WEMYSS When Victoria Wemyss left America and sailed away for England she left behind her everything relating to Marshall Treemon. She would have resented the suggestion that she had left her heart as well. That comfortable organ was with her as a most literal British truth, and was needed for pumping the rose to her dainty cheeks. Few liberties could be taken with this daughter of an ambassador, in a Pickwickian or other sense, although her stay under the stars and stripes had been broadening and developing, and, prolonged, might in time have ripened her thoroughly. But as yet, within her purple and cloud-embroidered sphere, high, narrow, and circumscribed, she was haughtily limited and provincial. Your highly bred Englishwoman lacks a refined and delicate sense of humor. She is choice, chaste, and charming, but her delicate flesh is solid, and a hawk and hand-saw are to her bird and implement. Her Shakespeare knew this, and went south for his parti-emotional heroines, his Juliets and his Violas; but he came home again for constancy. The veins of his Imogene flowed the ruddiest Saxon. Victoria Wemyss had liked Marshall Treemon, and she continued to like him. He was an American to the core, having acquired not a scintilla of grace that was foreign nor any quality that did not belong to his country. Victoria was glad of this, because it constituted his attraction. In thinking it over, she did not recall any grace that he lacked or any quality with which she would have endowed him. She did not know of other graces or qualities which other men had, who were of her country, which would have adorned him, and yet he was different. She had said this before, and it was a constant pleasure to repeat it. And his merit and impossibility lay in the...