Explore "My Lady Rotha" by Stanley J. Weyman on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
What my lady's thoughts were during her long ride back to the camp, I do not know. But I have heard her say that when she rode into the village, a day and a half in advance of the dusty, lumbering convoy, she could scarcely believe that it was the place she had left, the place in which she had lived for a fortnight. And this, though all remained the same. So much does the point from which we look at things alter their aspect.
The general had sent on the news of the Waldgrave's loss by messenger, that she might be spared the pain of telling it; and Fraulein Max and Marie Wort were waiting on the wooden platform before the house when she rode wearily in. The sight of those two gave her a certain sense of relief and home coming, merely because they were women and wore petticoats. But that was all. The village, the reeking camp, the squalid soldiery, the whining beggars filled her -- now that her eyes were opened and she saw this ugly face of war stripped of the glamour with which her fancy had invested it -- with fear and repulsion. She wondered that she could ever have liked the place and been gay in it, or drawn pleasure from the amusements which now seemed poor and tawdry.