only to inform you of my new direction. I have kept my promise not to communicate with my sisters, so please be kind enough to send me news of them. Excerpt from the letter of Melissa Rivenwood to the Reverend Gregory Rivenwood, June 6, 1818 Dinner was something of an ordeal. Lady Dorothy, far from being the browbeaten little nonentity Melissa expected, turned out to be a stiff-backed martinet. Steel gray hair, unrelentingly confined in a coronet of braids; steel gray eyes that obviously had never dropped before any other pair; a tightly corseted thin figure (bound in steel as well, for all I know, Melissa thought)—that was Lady Dorothy. This was a woman who had never possessed the least vestige of beauty. In old age, when the remnants of prettiness are long stripped away, she fared better than most, composed all of dignity and iron. Despite herself, Melissa quailed a bit at the prospect of “managing” this woman “tactfully.” On introduction the dowager countess carefully examined Melissa (rather as if I were a chicken at market, and a scrawny one at that, was Melissa’s amused notion) and, granting her no direct comment, turned instead to Giles.
What do You think about Her Ladyship's Companion (1983)?
