Explore "Passage in the Secret History of an Irish Countess" by Joseph Thomas Sheridan Le Fanu on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The following paper is written in a female hand, and was no doubt communicated to my much-regretted friend by the lady whose early history it serves to illustrate, the Countess D -- . She is no more -- she long since died, a childless and a widowed wife, and, as her letter sadly predicts, none survive to whom the publication of this narrative can prove "injurious, or even painful. " Strange! two powerful and wealthy families, that in which she was born, and that into which she had married, have ceased to be -- they are utterly extinct.
To those who know anything of the history of Irish families, as they were less than a century ago, the facts which immediately follow will at once suggest the names of the principal actors; and to others their publication would be useless -- to us, possibly, if not probably, injurious. I have, therefore, altered such of the names as might, if stated, get us into difficulty; others, belonging to minor characters in the strange story, I have left untouched.