her to keep her substantial dowry. For the next two years, Marie Grubbe travelled around Europe with her brother-in-law and lover spending the fortune her mother had left her. On her return her father married her to a local nobleman but this relationship too was unhappy. At the age of forty-six, she finally met the man who was going to be her companion for the rest of her life: a coach driver more than twenty years her junior. A wonderful historical novel and one of the jewels of Danish 19-th century fiction.