A Lady of Quality

In the dark, glittering world of late-seventeenth-century English nobility, Clorinda, Duchess of Jeoffry, stands at the center of a story shaped by beauty, cruelty, and hard-won strength. Born into a household ruled by Sir Jeoffry Wildairs's violence and excess, she enters life under the shadow of her mother's death and the fear that inheritance may mean suffering as well as privilege. Around her gather proud fathers, ambitious suitors, loyal friends, and dangerous rivals, all tangled in courtship, scandal, marriage, widowhood, and renewal. Francis Hodgson Burnett's A Lady of Quality moves from revelry to tragedy and from social display to moral reckoning. Clorinda's widowhood reveals her hidden tenderness, and her return to splendor shows a woman reclaiming herself after loss. When her father descends into madness, she casts aside rank and finery to nurse him through delirium, confronting him with justice, mercy, and the failures of his life. Rich in atmosphere and emotional intensity, the novel is a romance of power, desire, duty, and conscience. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.