Explore "A Tragedy of Love and Hate" by Bertha M. Clay on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
"I was sixteen and a half when my mother died. In England I should have been looked upon as a mere girl; in Spain I was a woman. Can you imagine my lot alone, poor, so young, so helpless? I thought my father must have relatives and friends in this far-off England; but I did not know how to reach them. At last the English consul at Madrid wrote for me; he said that the late Captain Payton belonged to the noble old English family of Pelhams, and that if my story were known I should be adopted by some of them. While waiting for the reply, I went to live with the only relative I had in the world -- a cousin of my mother -- a cross, proud, stiff, elderly lady, Donna Maria de Borga, who hated every one in the world younger than herself. I was so wretched, so unutterably wretched, that I wished myself dead over and over again. You can fancy a flower shut out from the sunshine and left to die in the cold. You can imagine a bird deprived of light and liberty. With my mother, life had been all poetry and happiness; now it was all gloom.
"An answer came from England, saying the only member of my father's family living was Sir Alfred Pelham, and he was traveling on the Continent; that he would make a point of seeing me, and seeing what could be done for me, before he returned.