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Introduction
A Dreadful Temptationby Mrs. Alex McVeigh Miller is a dramatic romantic novel filled with mystery,
emotion, and difficult choices. The story explores love, betrayal, trust, and the consequences of human weakness.
Written in simple and engaging language, the novel keeps readers interested through emotional conflicts and
unexpected events.
Overview of the Story
The novel follows characters whose lives become complicated because of secrets, temptation, and emotional struggles.
As relationships grow more intense, misunderstandings and hidden truths create tension throughout the story.
The main conflict centers on personal decisions and moral challenges. Characters must choose between selfish desires
and doing what is right, even when those choices bring pain and sacrifice.
Genre: Romantic drama and mysteryMain themes: Love, temptation, and trustWriting style: Emotional and easy to readSetting: A traditional society filled with social expectations
The Theme of Temptation
One of the strongest ideas in the novel is temptation. The story shows how people can be influenced by jealousy,
greed, pride, or emotional weakness. Some characters make poor decisions because they allow emotions to control
their actions.
The novel teaches that temptation can lead to suffering and broken relationships if people fail to think carefully
about their choices.
The story reminds readers that honesty and self-control are important during difficult situations.
Love and Emotional Conflict
Love plays a major role in the story, but the relationships are often complicated by misunderstanding and secrecy.
The characters struggle with trust, loyalty, and emotional pain as they face personal challenges.
Mrs. Alex McVeigh Miller creates emotional scenes that show both the beauty and difficulty of love. Readers can
easily connect with the feelings of heartbreak, hope, fear, and forgiveness shown throughout the novel.
"Hear the mellow wedding-bells—
Golden bells!
What a world of happiness
Their melody foretells!"
"Hark! there's the wedding-march."
"Here they come!"
"Looks as white as a corpse, doesn't she?"
"Oh, no; as beautiful as a dream, to my notion. Pallor is becoming in brides, you know."
"He's a silly old dotard, though, not to know that she's taking him for his money."
"Of course he knows it. I dare say the old gray-beard is glad he had money enough to buy so much youth and loveliness."
"What a splendid veil and dress! They say her rich aunt furnished the
trousseau
."
"Her jewels are magnificent."
"The bridegroom's gift, of course. Well, he is able to cover her with diamonds."
These were but few of the remarks that were whispered in the fashionable throng gathered at Trinity to witness a marriage in high life—a marriage that was all the more interesting from the fact that the contracting parties were so totally dissimilar to each other that the whole affair in the eyes of the outsiders resolved itself into a simple matter of bargain and sale—so much youth and beauty for an old man's gold.
The bridegroom was John St. John, a millionaire of high birth and standing in the city where he lived, but so old and infirm that people said of him that "he had one foot in the grave and the other on the brink of it," and the
[Pg 2]
bride was the young daughter of some obscure country people.
An aunt in the city had given her some advantages, and kept her in town two seasons, hoping to bring about a good match for her, since she had no dowry of her own, save youth, talent and peerless beauty.
"And what is your fortune, my pretty maid?"
"My face is my fortune, sir," she said.
And Xenie Carroll was fulfilling her aunt's ambitious hopes and desires to their uttermost limit as she walked up the broad aisle of Trinity that night, clothed in her bridal white, and leaning on the arm of the decrepit old millionaire, John St. John.
His form was bent with age, his hair and beard were white, his eyes were dim and bleared; and she was in the bloom of youth and beauty. It was the union of winter and summer.
They passed slowly up the aisle to the grand music of the wedding-march, and after them came fair maidens, robed in white and adorned with flowers and jewels.
These stood round about the pair at the altar who were taking upon their lips the sacred vow of marriage.
It was over.
The holy man of God lifted reverent hands and invoked God's blessing upon this sordid bargain that desecrated the holy rite of marriage, the ring was slipped over the bride's white finger, and Xenie Carroll turned away from the altar Mrs. John St. John, mistress of the handsomest house in the city and the most princely private fortune.
There was a flash of triumph in her dark eyes as she received the congratulations of her friends, yet her cheeks and lips were cold and white as marble.
But the light and color came back to her beautiful face when, in the same carriage that had taken her from her aunt's roof a poor, dependent girl, she was whirled back to the millionaire's splendid home to take her place as its queen.
The aged bridegroom scarcely felt equal to an extended bridal tour, so he had wisely eschewed a trip, and determined to inaugurate the reign of the new social star by a brilliant reception at his splendid residence.
All the beauties of art and nature were called in to further his design.
The elegant drawing-rooms were almost transformed into bowers of tropical bloom.
Beautiful birds fluttered their tropical plumage and caroled their sweet songs in the gilded cages that swung in the flowery arches and niches.
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Music filled the air with entrancing strains, wooing light feet to the giddy dance.
In the spacious supper-room the tables shone with silver and gold and crystal, and every delicacy that could tempt the appetite from home or foreign shores was daintily served for the wedding-guests, with wines of the purest vintage and greatest age.
There was no lack of wealth, there was no lack of beauty in the brilliant assemblage that graced the millionaire's proud house that night; and she, his bride, was now the wealthiest, as she had ever been the loveliest, of them all, yet she stole away at length from her aged bridegroom's flatteries, and sought the solitude of the conservatory.
"My love, you are simply perfect. You look like a bride." Mrs. Carroll spoke enthusiastically, and her daughter flushed brightly with gratified pride and pleasure. She was standing before th…
"Mrs. St. John, allow me to present to you Lord Dudley." Xenie turned with a languid smile and bowed to the tall, elegant gentleman who bent admiringly before her. Only ten minutes before Mr…
"Xenie, is that you? Are you just home from the ball?" Mrs. Carroll turned sleepily on her pillow and looked at the little figure that came gliding in, looking ghost-like in the pale glimmer…
Jack Mainwaring—for it was indeed himself—looked at his sister-in-law with a half-sarcastic smile. He had no love for Lora's relations. He considered that they had treated him badly. He was as we…
Xenie St. John turned with a half-stifled shriek and looked at the daring intruder. She saw her enemy standing in the center of the room looking down at her from his princely hight with a lightning fl…
On the deck of a noble steamer outward bound, Lora Mainwaring leaned upon her husband's arm and waved a fond farewell to her mother and sister who watched her tearfully from the shore. Captain Ma…
A gentleman, standing alone beside a marble fountain, turns with a start and looks at her. His face is handsome, eager, agitated. "Mrs. St. John," he says; then a strange constraint seems to…
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