Excerpt from In the City of Flowers: Or, Adelaide's Awakening The Squire who reigned there was a gouty, irascible invalid, dependent on his wife for attention within doors, and on his agent, Mr. Smithers, for the management of his estate out of doors. His wife, Lady Mary Beauchamp, always seemed like a plant which gets neither sun nor air. She was tall and stately. Her face was pale, and she never wore any bright colours to relieve the monotony of her appearance. The Squire had no children by his second marriage, but there was a tradition in the town that his first wife had left him a son. Mystery shrouded the Squire's past. He had left Cruttwell Court for many years; when he returned to it, he brought the daughter of an Irish peer to be mistress of the house, and to minister to his whims, which seemed to increase in number every year. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.