Marianne

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Ellis Selton stirred the smouldering logs with the end of her cane. A long tongue of flame leapt up, curled like a glowing snake about the logs and up into the dark expanse of the chimney. She leaned back in her chair with a sigh. Tonight, she hated the whole world and herself more than anything. It was always so when the weight of loneliness became unbearable.

Outside, sharp gusts of wind were bending the tops of the great trees in the park, whirling round the house and howling mournfully down the chimneys. To the lonely old maid who was the last remaining Selton, the storm seemed to draw out of the ground all the age-old ancestral voices of the place. There were no men now to inherit the great estate, no proud joyous young men with loud voices and strong backs who would make light of such a burden. There was only Ellis, lame and thirty-eight years old, to whom no one had ever spoken words of love. Not that she would have had any difficulty in finding a husband, but those who were attracted by her fortune and the splendours of Selton Hall filled her with such contempt that she could never bring herself to make the choice. And so, rejecting one suitor after another, she had turned by degrees into this grey-clad recluse, entrenched in her pride and her memories.

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