5. The Heart of a Maid

Immediately after a brief honeymoon, Jack was sent to Burma to continue his work on the Great Survey of India. Trix stayed behind in Lahore, where she began work on a novel featuring an unfeeling heroine struggling through the early years of a mis-matched and bitterly unhappy marriage. In January of 1890, after less than six months in Burma, Jack became sick and was granted home leave. Having to remove promptly to England, Trix hastily and harshly concluded her novel. Just two years into her marriage, Trix’s novel, The Heart of a Maid, appeared under the pen name Beatrice Grange. The pen name was required not only to protect Trix’s modesty but also to obscure her private marital discontent. The early events of the novel not only paralleled Trix’s life but were being recorded almost simultaneously with it. The novel is remarkable for its insight into the heart and mind of its unusually cool heroine.