Daughters of England

Начало книги

I FIRST SAW Kitty Carslake from the schoolroom window at Willerton House. She was walking across the lawn in the company of several young men and women. They were all laughing merrily together. It was a scene similar to others I had witnessed from the window, but this was different. Kitty was there, and she stood out among them all because she herself was different in some subtle way, which at that time I could not define. She fascinated me from that first moment, though I did not know then what an effect she was going to have on my fife.

I had often looked from that window down on a world which was very different from my own. To me it was like a peep show, a glimpse into a way of life that was colorful and glamorous, a way of life of which I should never be part, so I had to be grateful to Maria Willerton for making glimpses of it possible.

I had been born on the Wiltshire estate of Sir Henry Willerton, by whom my father was employed as managing agent, on the thirtieth day of January in the year 1649, that very day when the King's triumphant enemies had cut off his head outside the Palace in Whitehall, in the sight of those who had gathered to watch. A new way of life had begun then, for the nation discarded its frivolous ways and was subject to the rule of the Puritans.

Читать дальше →