Explore "The Translation of a Savage, Volume 1" by Gilbert Parker on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
When Mrs. Frank Armour arrived at Montreal she still wore her Indian / costume of clean, well-broidered buckskin, moccasins, and leggings, all / surmounted by a blanket. It was not a distinguished costume, but it / seemed suitable to its wearer. Mr. Armour's agent was in a quandary. / He had received no instructions regarding her dress. He felt, of course, / that, as Mrs. Frank Armour, she should put off these garments, and dress, / so far as was possible, in accordance with her new position. But when he / spoke about it to Mackenzie, the elderly maid and companion, he found / that Mr. Armour had said that his wife was to arrive in England dressed / as she was. He saw something ulterior in the matter, but it was not his / province to interfere. And so Mrs. Frank Armour was a passenger by the / Aphrodite in her buckskin garments.
What she thought of it all is not quite easy to say. It is possible that / at first she only considered that she was the wife of a white man, -- / a thing to be desired, and that the man she loved was hers for ever -- / a matter of indefinable joy to her. That he was sending her to England / did not fret her, because it was his will, and he knew what was best. / Busy with her contented and yet somewhat dazed thoughts of him, -- she / was too happy to be very active mentally, even if it had been the / characteristic of her race, -- she was not at first aware how much notice / she excited, and how strange a figure she was in this staring city. / When it did dawn upon her she shrank a little, but still was placid, / preferring to sit with her hands folded in her lap, idly watching things. / She appeared oblivious that she was the wife of a man of family and rank; / she was only thinking that the man was hers -- all hers. He had treated / her kindly enough in the days they were together, but she had not been / a great deal with him, because they travelled fast, and his duties were / many, or he made them so -- but the latter possibility did not occur to / her.