Explore "Given in Marriage" by B.M. Croker on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Mrs. Arabella Jenkins (née Travers), a stout little widow of sixty-four, occupied a large and lugubrious mansion in Queen's Gate, S.W. She was also the mistress of five thousand a year, eight servants -- not including a permanent "char" -- and one dog. Her mother, a pretty Scotch girl, had been of "no family," according to various disappointed dowagers -- "just someone Charles Travers had picked up when shooting on a moor, and by no means a suitable châtelaine for Lambourne."
However, the poor despised lady reigned but a few short years, and was succeeded, after a heartless interval, by a dashing damsel of undeniable birth, -- the mother of Laurence Travers, and his two brothers, -- who ably assisted her reckless husband to squander the remains of a famous estate.