The Fallen Leaves

by Wilkie Collins


To CAROLINE

Experience of the reception of _The Fallen Leaves_ by intelligent
readers, who have followed the course of the periodical publication at
home and abroad, has satisfied me that the design of the work speaks
for itself, and that the scrupulous delicacy of treatment, in certain
portions of the story, has been as justly appreciated as I could wish.
Having nothing to explain, and (so far as my choice of subject is
concerned) nothing to excuse, I leave my book, without any prefatory
pleading for it, to make its appeal to the reading public on such
merits as it may possess.

W. C. GLOUCESTER PLACE, LONDON July 1st, 1879


THE PROLOGUE

I

The resistless influences which are one day to reign supreme over our
poor hearts, and to shape the sad short course of our lives, are
sometimes of mysteriously remote origin, and find their devious ways to
us through the hearts and the lives of strangers.

While the young man whose troubled career it is here proposed to follow