After Dark by Wilkie Collins

  Two good results followed the ready rendering of the help I had askedfrom my host's daughters. I succeeded with my portrait of MademoiselleClairfait, and I heard the story which occupies the following pages.

  In the case of the preceding narratives, I have repeated what wasrelated to me, as nearly as possible in the very words of my sitters.In the case of this third story, it is impossible for me to proceed uponthe same plan. The circumstances of "Sister Rose's" eventful historywere narrated to me at different times, and in the most fragmentary anddiscursive manner. Mademoiselle Clairfait characteristically mixed upwith the direct interest of her story, not only references to places andpeople which had no recognizable connection with it, but outbursts ofpassionate political declamation, on the extreme liberal side--tosay nothing of little tender apostrophes to her beloved friend, whichsounded very prettily as she spoke them, but which would losetheir effect altogether by being transferred to paper. Under thesecircumstances, I have thought it best to tell the story in my ownway--rigidly adhering to the events of it exactly as they were related;and never interfering on my own responsibility except to keep orderin the march of the incidents, and to present them, to the best of myability, variously as well as interestingly to the reader.

  THE FRENCH GOVERNESS'S STORY OF SISTER ROSE.

  PART FIRST.