Phroso A Romance BY ANTHONY HOPE BY THE SAME AUTHOR Mr Witt’s Widow Sport Royal A Change of Air Half a Hero The Prisoner of Zenda Father Stafford The God in the Car Comedies of Courtship The Heart of the Princess Osra A SHOT WHISTLED BY ME. Page 120. PHROSO A ROMANCE BY ANTHONY HOPE WITH EIGHT ILLUSTRATIONS BY H. R. MILLAR METHUEN & CO. 36 ESSEX STREET, W.C. LONDON 1897 CONTENTS LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. [Pg 1] [Pg 1] PHROSO CHAPTER I A LONG THING ENDING IN POULOS ‘Quot homines tot sententiæ;’ so many men, so many fancies. My fancy was for an island. Perhaps boyhood’s glamour hung yet round sea-girt rocks, and ‘faery lands forlorn,’ still beckoned me; perhaps I felt that London was too full, the Highlands rather fuller, the Swiss mountains most insufferably crowded of them all. Money can buy company, and it can buy retirement. The latter service I asked now of the moderate wealth with which my poor cousin Tom’s death had endowed me. Everybody was good enough to suppose that I rejoiced at Tom’s death, whereas I was particularly sorry for it, and was not consoled even by the prospect of the island. My friends understood this wish for an island as little as they appreciated my feelings about poor Tom. Beatrice was most[Pg 2] emphatic in declaring that ‘a horrid little island’ had no charms for her, and that she would never set foot in it. This declaration was rather annoying, because I had imagined myself, spending my honeymoon with Beatrice on the island; but life is not all honeymoon, and I decided to have the island none the less. Besides I was not to be married for a year. Mrs Kennett
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