Read "A Daughter of the Vine" by Gertrude Atherton online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Mr. Randolph owned a large ranch in Lake County which was managed by an agent. A mile distant from the farm-house in which the agent lived with the "hands" was a cottage, built several years since at Nina's request. As Lake County was then difficult of access, Mr. Randolph seldom visited his ranch, his wife never; but once a year Nina took a party of girl friends to the cottage, usually in mid-summer. This year she went alone. Immediately after Thorpe's departure she told her father of the conditional engagement into which she had entered.
"And I wish to spend this year alone," she added. "Not only because I want to get away from my mother, but because I believe that nothing will help me more than entire change of associations. And solitude has no terrors for me. I simply cannot go on in the old routine. I am bored to death with the meaninglessness of it. That has come suddenly: probably because I have come to want so much more."