Produced by Suzanne Shell, Verity White and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net _Beyond the Rocks_ [Illustration: Rodolph Valentino, as Lord Bracondale and Elinor Glyn, the author.] _Beyond the Rocks A Love Story by Elinor Glyn Author of "Three Weeks" With illustrations From the Paramount Photo-Play Produced by Famous Players-Lasky Corp. starring Gloria Swanson with Rodolph Valentino New York The Macaulay Company_ Printed in the U.S.A. ILLUSTRATIONS FACING PAGE Rodolph Valentino, as Lord Bracondale and Elinor Glyn, the author _Frontispiece_ "She Wondered What Love Was--" 8 "Once Upon a Time There Was a Fairy Prince and Princess--" 96 What Could He Say to Her-- 314 _Beyond the Rocks_ I The hours were composed mostly of dull or rebellious moments during the period of Theodora's engagement to Mr. Brown. From the very first she had thought it hard that she should have had to take this situation, instead of Sarah or Clementine, her elder step-sisters, so much nearer his age than herself. To do them justice, either of these ladies would have been glad to relieve her of the obligation to become Mrs. Brown, but Mr. Brown thought otherwise. A young and beautiful wife was what he bargained for. To enter a family composed of three girls--two of the first family, one almost thirty and a second very plain--a father with a habit of accumulating debts and obliged to live at Bruges and inexpensive foreign sea-side towns, required a strong motive; and this Josiah Brown found in the deliciously rounded, white velvet cheek of Theodora, the third daughter, to say nothing of her slender grace, the grace of a young fawn, and a pair of gentian-blue eyes that said things to people in the first glance. Poor, foolish, handsome Dominic Fitzgerald, light-hearted, debonair Irish gentleman, gay and gallant on his miserable pension of a broken and retired Guardsman, had had just sufficient sense to insist upon magnificent settlements, certainly prompted thereto by Clementine, who inherited the hard-headedness of the early defunct Scotch mother, as well as her high cheek-bones. That affair had been a youthful _mesalliance_. "You had better see we all gain something by it, papa," she had said. "Make the old bore give Theodora a huge allowance, and have it all fixed and settled by law beforehand. She is such a fool about money--just like you--she will shower it upon us; and you make him pay you a sum down as well." Captain Fitzgerald fortunately consulted an honest solicitor, and so things were arranged to the satisfaction of all parties concerned except Theodora herself, who found the whole affair far from her taste.