The Project Gutenberg EBook of Coralie, by Charlotte M. Braeme
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Title: Coralie
Author: Charlotte M. Braeme
Release Date: August 12, 2004 [EBook #13162]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CORALIE ***
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EVERYDAY LIFE LIBRARY No. 2
CORALIE
By CHARLOTTE M. BRAEME
Author of "Dora Thorne," "The Mystery of Colde Fell," "The Belle of
Lynn," "Madolin's Lover," "The Heiress of Hilldrop," Etc., Etc.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER I.
"Eighty pounds a year!" My reader can imagine that this was no great
fortune. I had little or nothing to spend in kid gloves or cigars;
indeed, to speak plain, prosaic English, I went without a good dinner
far oftener than I had one. Yet, withal, I was passing rich on eighty
pounds a year.
My father, Captain Trevelyan, a brave and deserving officer, died when I
was a child. My mother, a meek, fragile invalid, never recovered his
loss, but died some years after him, leaving me alone in the world with
my sister Clare.
When I was young I had great dreams of fame and glory. I was to be a
brave soldier like my dear, dead father, or a great writer or a
statesman. I dreamed of everything except falling into the common
grooves of life--which was my fate in after years. My mother, believing
in my dreams, contrived to send me to college--we both considered a
college education the only preliminary to a golden future. How she
managed it out of her slender means I cannot tell, but she kept me at
college for three years. I was just trying to decide what profession to
adopt, when a letter came summoning me suddenly home.
My mother was ill, not expected to live.
When I did reach home I found another source of trouble. My sister
Clare, whom I had left a beautiful, blooming girl of eighteen, had been
ill for the past year. The doctors declared it to be a spinal complaint,
from which she was not likely to recover, although she might live for
years.
She was unable to move, but lay always on a couch or sofa. The first
glimpse of her altered face, so sweet, so sad and colorless, made my
heart ache.
All th
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