The black pearl by Marie Lion
"The Black Pearl" by Marie Lion is a novel written in the early 20th century. It follows Jeanne, a young Parisian orphan transplanted to an Australian sheep station, whose inherited black pearl—linked to a Begum ancestor—becomes a symbol of destiny as she navigates love, conscience, and belief between the upright Reverend Hector Armstrong and the dangerously magnetic Allan Russell. The opening of the story shows Jeanne arriving at Gwylata, meeting her kind
uncle, fragile aunt, stern housekeeper Meg, and the much-praised yet absent Hector. Given a necklace crowned by a black pearl, she dreams of an Indian princess and a compelling Rajah, foreshadowed in real life when Allan Russell’s gaze unsettles her at a Hunt Club ball. Jeanne bonds with station folk, nurses the aboriginal child Bahloo, and grows close to Hector, who proposes after a fall from her horse; but when she earnestly studies Anglican doctrine, a crisis of faith erupts. Unable to take Communion against her conscience, she breaks the engagement; Hector leaves for the leper mission at Molokai, and soon after Jeanne’s uncle is ruined and dies, followed by her aunt. After selflessly providing for old retainers, Jeanne departs the sold station and anchors in a new life as a governess in New South Wales, where her first days with two spirited children hint at a fresh beginning. (This is an automatically generated summary.)
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About this eBook
| Author | Lion, Marie, 1855-1922 |
|---|---|
| Translator | Wholohan, Maude, 1859-1950 |
| Uniform Title | Vers la lumière. English |
| Title | The black pearl |
| Original Publication | Melbourne: George Robertson & Company Propty. Ltd., 1911. |
| Credits | David E. Brown, Mary Fahnestock-Thomas, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) |
| Language | English |
| LoC Class | PR: Language and Literatures: English literature |
| Subject | Young women -- Fiction |
| Subject | Man-woman relationships -- Fiction |
| Subject | Theosophy -- Fiction |
| Subject | French -- Australia -- Fiction |
| Category | Text |
| EBook-No. | 78087 |
| Release Date | Mar 2, 2026 |
| Copyright Status | Public domain in the USA. |
| Downloads | 5115 downloads in the last 30 days. |
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