FLORENCE SACKVILLE; OR, SELF-DEPENDENCE. CHAPTER I. My protracted illness, and the loss and absence of friends who would have served me, had indeed reduced us to a dilemma from which it was now become imperatively necessary that I should make a strenuous effort to extricate us all. And as strength returned, I became more and more impatient of inaction, and anxious to exert myself. But the avenues to advancement in the career I had marked out for myself, seemed to be now closed. My successful début had probably been forgotten, and other débutantes filled the places that were then open for me. Instead of being sought, as I might have been at first, when my success was fresh in public recollection, I had now to seek; perhaps to undergo the mortification of reminding those to whom I applied of my very VOL. III. B |