This state of things continued, without any particular change, until Regina was nearly twenty years old. By that time the great Franco-Prussian War had beaten itself into peace, the horrors of the Commune of Paris had come and gone, and the sun of Regina Brown’s twentieth birthday rose upon a world in which nations had come once more, at least to outward seeming, to the conclusion that all men are brothers. It might have been some long-forgotten echo from the early days when France and England fought against Russia, or it might have been in a measure owing to the conflict, so long, so deadly and so bloody, between France and Germany, but certain is it that, when Regina Brown realized that she was twenty years old, she came to the conclusion that she was leading a wasted life.
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