A Widow's Tale Author:Mrs Oliphant 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: MADEMOISELLE. CHAPTER L She was not altogether French, notwithstanding her name: in deed her nationality was the most dubious thing in the world, unless an... more »y assault was made upon either of the countries to which she owed her parentage. She had a way of thus becoming intensely English at a moment's notice, and intensely French the next—the latter, perhaps, with still greater warmth than the former, as became the constitutional difference between French and English. She was a woman in the full flower and prime of life—that is, approaching thirty-five: a period, however, at which few people will acknowledge a woman's prime to be. According to the vulgar notion, indeed, beauty has begun to fade at this period, when it ought to be in fullest, gorgeous flower. There are some liberal minds which will confess that a woman who is married is in all her magnificence at this age; but for those who are unmarried it is always, in England at least, considered a time of decadence. Thirty-five means fading—the state of the delaissee —the condition of the old maid. Mademoiselle had come to this age. She had been a governess for a great part of her life, since she was twenty : fifteen long years, but it seemed a hundred as she looked back upon it. She had developed in that time from a raw girl—weeping passionate tears over a great many things which she scarcely noticed now, feeling herself abandoned, miserable, left in the background, left out of everything, humiliated in her unaccustomed position, injured by life and all that happened to her—into a rational, calm woman, who had made up her mind to the path she was compelled by necessity to tread, and hadacquired a dignity of her own which no little slights or scorn could touch. The number of people who are absolutely unkind to their governess...« less