Explore "The Valley of Decision" by Edith Wharton on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Reluctantly, every year about the Epiphany, the old Marquess rode down from Donnaz to spend two months in Turin. It was a service exacted by King Charles Emanuel, who viewed with a jealous eye those of his nobles inclined to absent themselves from court and rewarded their presence with privileges and preferments. At the same time the two canonesses descended to their abbey in the plain, and thus with the closing in of winter the old Marchioness, Odo and his mother were left alone in the castle.
To the Marchioness this was an agreeable period of spiritual compunction and bodily repose; but to Donna Laura a season of despair. The poor lady, who had been early removed from the rough life at Donnaz to the luxurious court of Pianura, and was yet in the fulness of youth and vivacity, could not resign herself to an existence no better, as she declared, than that of any herdsman's wife upon the mountains. Here was neither music nor cards, scandal nor love-making; no news of the fashions, no visits from silk-mercers or jewellers, no Monsu to curl her hair and tempt her with new lotions, or so much as a strolling soothsayer or juggler to lighten the dullness of the long afternoons.