Explore "A Crown of Straw" by Allen Upward on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
THE Princess Hermengarde was one of those characters of whom much is said but little is known.
It was said that she was proud. It was believed that she was ambitious. It was admitted that she had once been beautiful. In the days before her marriage, when she was still the heiress to the Duchy of Schwerin-Strelitz, she had been flattered with the title of the belle of Europe. In her thirty-sixth year she was still handsome and commanding, but the youthful loveliness had disappeared. What years had failed to do had been wrought more surely by disappointed hope and wounded pride. In the words of Count von Stahlen, the Court wit, the Princess Hermengarde was an old woman of middle age.