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                                                  THE
                                                  VICISSITUDES
                                                  OF
                                                  EVANGELINE




                        _All rights reserved._

                        _Copyright in America._

[Illustration: _Evangeline._]




  THE
  VICISSITUDES
  OF
  EVANGELINE

                                            BY ELINOR GLYN

                                               AUTHOR OF
                                               “THE VISITS OF ELIZABETH”
                                               AND “THE REFLECTIONS OF
                                               AMBROSINE”

[Illustration]

  LONDON
  DUCKWORTH & CO.
  3, HENRIETTA STREET
  COVENT GARDEN, W.C.
  MDCCCCV




              CHISWICK PRESS: CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND CO.
                  TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE, LONDON.




                                  TO
                        THE WOMEN WITH RED HAIR




  THE BEGINNING OF
  EVANGELINE’S JOURNAL




            THE BEGINNING OF
            EVANGELINE’S JOURNAL


  BRANCHES PARK,

  _November 3rd, 1904_.

I WONDER so much if it is amusing to be an adventuress, because that
is evidently what I shall become now. I read in a book all about it;
it is being nice-looking and having nothing to live on, and getting a
pleasant time out of life--and I intend to do that! I have certainly
nothing to live on, for one cannot count £300 a year--and I am
extremely pretty, and I know it quite well, and how to do my hair, and
put on my hats, and those things, so, of course, I am an adventuress!
I was not intended for this _rôle_--in fact Mrs. Carruthers adopted
me on purpose to leave me her fortune, as at that time she had
quarrelled with her heir, who was bound to get the place. Then she was
so inconsequent as not to make a proper will--thus it is that this
creature gets everything, and I nothing!

I am twenty, and up to the week before last, when Mrs. Carruthers got
ill, and died in one day, I had had a fairly decent time at odd moments
when she was in a good temper.

There is no use pretending even when people are dead, if one is writing
down one’s real thoughts. I detested Mrs. Carruthers most of the time.
A person whom it was impossible to please. She had no idea of justice,
or of anything but her own comfort, and what amount of pleasure other
people could contribute to her day!

How she came to do anything for me at all was because she had been
in love with papa, and when he married poor mamma--a person of no
family--and then died, she offered to take me, and bring me up, just
to spite mamma, she has often told me. As I was only four I had no say
in the matter, and if mamma liked to give me up that was her affair.
Mamma’s father was a lord, and her mother I don’t know who, and they
had not worried to get married, so that is how it is poor mamma came to
have no relations. After papa was dead she married an Indian officer,
and went off to India, and died too, and I never saw her any more--so
there it is, there is not a soul in the world who matters to me, or I
to them, so I can’t help being an adventuress, and thinking only of
myself, can I?

Mrs. Carruthers periodically quarrelled with all the neighbours, so
beyond frigid calls now and then in a friendly interval, we never saw
them much. Several old, worldly ladies used to come to stay, but I
liked none of them, and I have no young friends. When it is getting
dark, and I am up here alone, I often wonder what it would be like if
I had--but I believe I am the kind of cat that would not have got on
with them too nicely--so perhaps it is just as well; only to have had a
pretty--aunt, say, to love one, that might have been nice.

Mrs. Carruthers had no feelings like this. “Stuff and
nonsense”--“sentimental rubbish” she would have called them. To get
a suitable husband is what she brought me up for, she said, and for
the last years had arranged that I should marry her detested heir