TRUE LOVE A STORY OF ENGLISH DOMESTIC LIFE. BY SARAH E. FARRO. DONOHUE & HENNEBERRY, PRINTERS AND BINDERS, CHICAGO. COPYRIGHT SECURED 1891. PREFACE. The author is aware that she is entering a field which has been diligently cultivated by the best minds in Europe and America. Her design in the preparation of this story is to give to the public a sketch of her ideas on the effect of “true love.” I have tried to make the plot exciting without being sensational or common, although within the bounds of proper romance, and create a set of characters most of whom are like real people with whose thoughts and passions we are able to sympathize and whose language and conduct may be appreciable or reprehensible according to circumstances. Great pains have been taken to make this work superior in its arrangement and finish and in the general tastefulness of its mechanical execution. How nearly the author has accomplished her purpose to give to the public in one volume a clear and complete treatise on this subject, combining many fine qualities of importance to the reader, the intelligent and experienced public must decide. SARAH E. FARRO. [Illustration: True Love.] BY SARAH E. FARRO. CHAPTER I. MRS. BREWSTER’S DAUGHTERS. A fine old door of oak, a heavy door standing deep within a portico inside of which you might have driven a coach, brings you to the residence of Mrs. Brewster. The hall was dark and small, the only light admitted to it being from windows of stained glass; numberless passages branched off from the hall, one peculiarity being that you could scarcely enter a single room in it but you must first go down a passage, short or long, to get to it; had the house been designed by an architect with a head upon his shoulders and a little common sense within it, he might have made a respectable house to say the least; as it was, the rooms were cramped and narrow, cornered and confined, and the good space was taken up by these worthless passages; a plat of ground before it was crowded with flowers, far too crowded for good taste, as the old gardener would point out to her, but Mrs. Brewster loved flowers and would not part with one of them. Being the daughter of a carpenter and the wife of a merchant tailor, she had scrambled through life amidst bustle and poverty, moving from one house to another, never settled anywhere for long. It was an existence not to be envied, although it is the lot of many. She was Mrs. Brewster and her husband was not a very good husband to her; he was rather too fond of amusing himself, and threw all the care upon her shoulders; she spent her time nursing her sickly children and endeavouring to make one dollar go as far as two. One day, to her unspeakable embarrassment, she found herself changed from a poor woman in moderate circumstances to an heiress to a certain degree, her father having received a legacy