Excerpt from Damaris: A NovelOut of the dim beginnings of things, from amongst confused and shifting shadow-pictures, emerged the composed, sprightly, light-stepping figure of Henrietta Pereira. Beholding it, Damaris fell over head and ears in love. She was then five years old. Whereupon her baby soul, breaking free of the chrysalid stage, spread its little wings and she became consciously and actively human.The date of Damaris' second birth was late in March, 1864. The scene of it, a massive, square-built, ochre-coloured house in North-West India, the windows of whose many lofty rooms opened on to broad, arcaded verandahs as to the ground floor, and galleries as to the floor above.Formerly the summer palace of the reigning native prince, the Sultan-i-bagh, at Bhutpur, stands solitary, overlooking a tract of waste land, from behind an avenue of wide-branching tamarind trees. About half a mile distant to the right were the Cantonments, the military hospital, and garrison church - the latter, at the time in question, still in process of building.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.