First published as a World's Classic paperback, 1989.

"Brought up by her widowed father in a remote English castle, Arabella resorts to reading the French novels popular in her mother's youth, and in the solitude of this Arcadia paints a picture of her life as adventurous and deeply romantic. When her father dies, however, she inherits a barbed legacy: if she is not to lose part of the estate it appears she must marry her cousin Glanville. But Arabella has developed a different, private code of conduct which does not allow her to take any role but center stage in the drama of her own life; her literary heroines are always in control."--Book Jacket.