The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Reflections of Ambrosine, by Elinor Glyn

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Title: The Reflections of Ambrosine
A Novel

Author: Elinor Glyn

Release Date: March 18, 2004 [EBook #11624]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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The Reflections of Ambrosine

A Novel by

Elinor Glyn

NOTE

In thanking the readers who were kind enough to appreciate my "Visits
of Elizabeth," I take this opportunity of saying that I did not write
the two other books which appeared anonymously. The titles of those
works were so worded that they gave the public the impression that I
was their author. I have never written any book but the "Visits of
Elizabeth." Everything that I write will be signed with my name,

ELINOR GLYN

BOOK I

I

I have wondered sometimes if there are not perhaps some disadvantages
in having really blue blood in one's veins, like grandmamma and me.
For instance, if we were ordinary, common people our teeth would
chatter naturally with cold when we have to go to bed without fires in
our rooms in December; but we pretend we like sleeping in "well-aired
rooms"--at least I have to. Grandmamma simply says we are obliged to
make these small economies, and to grumble would be to lose a trick
to fate.

"Rebel if you can improve matters," she often tells me, "but otherwise
accept them with calmness."

We have had to accept a good many things with calmness since papa made
that tiresome speculation in South America. Before that we had a nice
apartment in Paris and as many fires as we wished. However, in spite
of the comfort, grandmamma hated papa's "making" money. It was not the
career of a gentleman, she said, and when the smash came and one heard
no more of papa, I have an idea she was almost relieved.

We came first over to England, and, after long wanderings backward and
forward, took this little furnished place at the corner of Ledstone
Park. It is just a cottage--once a keeper's, I believe--and we have
only Hephzibah and a wretched ser