Only a girl's love
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Author
Garvice, Charles
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General Book Summary
"Only a Girl's Love" by Charles Garvice is a Victorian romance novel set in the English countryside near Wyndward Hall. The story centers on Stella Etheridge, a beautiful nineteen-year-old girl who escapes from a harsh boarding school in Florence, Italy, after her father Harold's death. With no money and nowhere else to turn, she flees to England to find her uncle, James Etheridge, a reclusive artist living in a small cottage near the grand Wyndward estate. Upon arriving at her uncle's home, Stella is warmly welcomed into his quiet, artistic life. That very first evening, she encounters Lord Leycester Wyndward, the dashing and notorious heir to the Wyndward fortune. Their meeting occurs when his spirited chestnut horse shies at her presence in a moonlit lane. Despite his reputation as a reckless, wild nobleman whose name is "infamous" throughout the country, Stella finds him charming, respectful, and captivating. Leycester, struck by her extraordinary beauty and spirited nature, immediately decides to stay at Wyndward Hall rather than return to London as planned. The novel explores the developing romance between Stella and Leycester, complicated by class differences and Leycester's scandalous reputation. His family, including his devoted mother the Countess and his invalid sister Lady Lilian, worry about his wild ways and his habit of losing fortunes on horse racing. They hope he will marry Lady Lenore Beauchamp, a suitable match of his own class. Meanwhile, Jasper Adelstone, an ambitious lawyer from the village who has risen in society, also takes interest in Stella and warns her against Lord Leycester. The story unfolds as Stella navigates these romantic entanglements while finding a true home with her artist uncle and the kindly housekeeper Mrs. Penfold. The central tension lies between Stella's growing love for the charismatic but troubled nobleman and the social barriers and warnings that stand between them.
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Book Excerpt
ONLY A GIRL'S LOVE
by CHARLES GARVICE
CHAPTER I
It is a warm evening in early Summer; the sun is setting behind a long range of fir and yew-clad hills, at the feet of which twists in and out, as it follows their curves, a placid, peaceful river. Opposite these hills, and running beside the river, are long-stretching meadows, brilliantly green with fresh-springing grass, and gorgeously yellow with newly-opened buttercups. Above, the sunset sky gleams and glows with fiery red and rich deep chromes. And London is almost within sight.
It is a beautiful scene, such as one sees only in this England of ours--a scene that defies poet and painter. At this very moment it is defying one of the latter genus; for in a room of a low-browed, thatched-roofed cottage which stood on the margin of the meadow, James Etheridge sat beside his easel, his eyes fixed on the picture framed in the open window, his brush and mahl-stick drooping in his idle hand.
Unconsciously he, the painter, made a picture worthy of study. Tall, thin, delicately made, with pale face crowned and set in softly-flowing white hair, with gentle, dreamy eyes ever seeking the infinite and unknown, he looked like one of those figures which the old Florentine artists used to love to put upon their canvases, and which when one sees even now makes one strangely sad and thoughtful.
The room was a fitting frame for the human subject; it was a true painter's studio--untidy, disordered, and picturesque. Finished and unfinished pictures hung or leant against the walls, suits of armor, antique weapons, strange costumes littered the floor or hung limply over mediæval chairs; books, some in bindings which would have made the mouth of a connoisseur water, lay open upon the table or were piled in a distant corner. And over all silence--unbroken save by the sound of the water rushing over the weir, or the birds which flitted by the open window--reigned supreme.
The old man sat for some time listening to Nature's music, and lost in dreamy admiration of her loveliness, until the striking of the church clock floated from the village behind the house; then, with a start, he rose, took up his brushes, and turned again to the easel. An hour passed, and still he worked, the picture growing beneath the thin, skillful hand; the birds sank into silence, the red faded slowly from the sky, and night unfolded its dark mantle...