Donna Quixote Author:Justin McCarthy Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. MRS. ALBERT VANTHORPE. The house in which Gabrielle Vanthorpe lived was one of Albert's whims. Almost immediately after he had come of age, an... more »d when he still had hopes that Gabrielle would marry him, he had seen a pretty little house standing in a tiny enclosure of its own, the enclosure being itself enclosed in a corner of one of the parks. It was so surrounded by trees and so embedded in its corner, that one might pass by day after day without suspecting that the little gate led to any dwelling of mortal. Albert was delighted with it, set his heart upon it, succeeded in getting possession of it on a long lease, and had it furnished after his own favourite ideas. It was to be a surprise and a delight to Gabrielle if things came right; and when there was no possibility of things coming right any more for him in this world,he had made it his express wish that Gabrielle should live in the house after his death. She had settled there now. It soothed her to be always in a place associated with his name; she would, if she might, have made every room in the little house a shrine of his memory. Like the father of whom Pliny tells us, she would have had the cherished image in brass, in marble, in wax, in every manner of substance, if she might. She resolved to keep the anniversary of his death as a day of mourning and solemn fast. Mrs. Leven was mistaken in supposing that she had made no change in her dress when Albert died. She always wore black, but she would not advertise herself as a widow by putting on the preposterous weeds. In all that was meant as a tribute to his memory there was, it is needless to say, a virtual acknowledgment that that memory might possibly otherwise have faded. At least there was the evidence of regret and something like remorse, because ...« less