Edited by Charles Aldarondo (aldarondo@yahoo.com)

George Gissing

The Emancipated





PART I





CHAPTER I

NORTHERNERS IN SUNLIGHT




By a window looking from Posillipo upon the Bay of Naples sat an
English lady, engaged in letter-writing. She was only in her
four-and-twentieth year, but her attire of subdued mourning
indicated widowhood already at the stage when it is permitted to
make quiet suggestion of freedom rather than distressful reference
to loss; the dress, however, was severely plain, and its grey
coldness, which would well have harmonized with an English sky in