Mrs. Balfame

Excerpt from Mrs. Balfame: A Novel
She was thankful that he did not bestow upon her the usual marital kiss; the smell of coffee on his mous tache had sickened her faintly ever since she had ceased to love him.
Or begun to hate him? She had wondered, as she lay there inhaling deeply to draw the blood from her head, if she ever had loved him. When a man and a maid are young! He had been a tall slim youth, with red cheeks and bright eyes, the catch of the village; his habits were commendable and he would inherit his father's store, his only brother having died a year earlier and his sisters married and moved West. She was pretty, empty-headed, as ill-educated as all girls of her class, but she kept her father's house neatly, she was noted even at sixteen for her pies, and at twenty for the dexterity and taste with which she made her own clothes out of practically noth ing. She was by no means the ordinary fool of her age class and nation. But although she was in capable of passion, she had a thin sentimental streak, a youthful desire for a romance, and a cold dislike for an impending stepmother.
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