for my real opinion?’
‘Pray let me hear it.’
‘Georgina had a grand course open to her, and she has shrunk from it.’
‘A grand course!’ repeated Jane, bewildered.
‘Yes, honest poverty, and independence. I looked to her to show the true meaning of that word. I call it dependence to be so unable to exist without this world’s trash as to live in bondage for its sake. Independence is trusting for maintenance to our own head and hands.’
‘So you really would have had us—do what? Teach music?—make lace?’
‘If I had been lucky enough to have such a fate, I would have been a village school-mistress.’
‘Not even a governess?’
‘I should like the village children better; but, seriously, I would gladly get my own bread, and I did believe Georgina meant to wait to be of age and do the same.’
‘But, Theodora, seriously! The loss of position.’
‘I would ennoble the office.’
‘With that head that looks as if it was born in the purple, you would ennoble anything, dear Theodora; but for ordinary—’
‘All that is done in earnest towards Heaven and man ennobles and is ennobled.’
‘True; but it needs a great soul and much indifference to creature comforts. Now, think of us, at our age, our relations’ welcome worn out—’
‘I thought you were desired to make Worthbourne your home.’
‘Yes, there was no want of kindness there; but, my dear, if you could only imagine the dulness. It was as if the whole place had been potted and preserved in Sir Roger de Coverley’s time. No neighbours, no club-books, no anything! One managed to vegetate through the morning by the help of being deputy to good Lady Bountiful; but oh! the evenings! Sir Antony always asleep after tea, and no one allowed to speak, lest he should be awakened, and the poor, imbecile son bringing out the draught-board, and playing with us all in turn. Fancy that, by way of enlivenment to poor Georgina after her nervous fever! I was quite alarmed about her,—her spirits seemed depressed for ever into apathy!’
‘I should think them in more danger now.’
‘Oh! her Finch is a manageable bird. Her life is in her own power, and she will have plenty of all that makes it agreeable. It is winning a home instead of working for it; that is the common sense view—’
‘Winning it by the vow to love, honour, and obey, when she knows she cannot?’
‘Oh, she may in the end. He is tame, and kind, and very much obliged. My dear Theodora, I could feel with you once; but one learns to see things in a different light as one lives on. After all, I have not done the thing.’
‘If you did not promote it, you justify it.’
‘May I not justify my sister to her friend?’
‘I do no such thing. I do not justify Arthur. I own that he has acted wrongly; but—No, I cannot compare the two cases. His was silly and bad enough, but it was a marriage, not a bargain.’
‘Well, perhaps one may turn out as well as the other.’
‘I am afraid so,’ sighed Theodora.
‘It has been a sad grief to you, so fond of your brother as you were.’
‘Not that I see much harm in the girl,’ continued Theodora; ‘but—’
‘But it is the loss of your brother! Do you know, I think it likely he may not be as much lost to you as if he had chosen a superior person. When the first fancy is over, such a young unformed thing as this cannot have by any means the influence that must belong to you. You will find him recurring to you as before.’
Meanwhile, Violet sat formal and forlorn in the drawing-room, and Lady Martindale tried to make conversation. Did she play, or draw? Matilda played, Caroline drew, she had been learning; and in horror of a request for music, she turned her eyes from the grand piano. Was she fond of flowers? O, yes! Of botany? Caroline was. A beautifully illustrated magazine of horticulture was laid before her, and somewhat relieved her, whilst the elder ladies talked about their fernery, in scientific terms, that sounded like an unknown tongue.
Perceiving that a book was wanted, she sprang up, begging to be told where to find it; but the answer made her fear she had been officious. ‘No, my dear, thank you, do not trouble yourself.’
The bell was rung, and a message sent to ask Miss Piper for the book. A small, pale, meek lady glided in, found the place, and departed; while Violet felt more discomposed than ever, under the sense of being a conceited little upstart, sitting among the grand ladies, while such a person was ordered about.
Ease seemed to come back with the gentlemen. Lord Martindale took her into the great drawing-room, to show her Arthur’s portrait, and the show of the house—Lady Martindale’s likeness, in the character of Lalla Rookh—and John began to turn over prints for her, while Arthur devoted himself to his aunt, talking in the way that, in his schoolboy days, would have beguiled from her sovereigns and bank-notes. However, his civilities were less amiably received, and he met with nothing but hits in return. He hoped that her winter had not been dull.
Not with a person of so much resource as his sister. Solitude with her was a pleasure—it showed the value of a cultivated mind.
‘She never used to be famous for that sort of thing,’ said Arthur.
‘Not as a child, but the best years for study come later. Education is scarcely begun at seventeen.’
‘Young ladies would not thank you for that maxim.’
‘Experience confirms me in it. A woman is nothing without a few years of grown-up girlhood before her marriage; and, what is more, no one can judge of her when she is fresh from the school-room. Raw material!’
Arthur laughed uneasily.
‘There is Mrs. Hitchcock—you know her?’
‘What, the lady that goes out with the hounds, and rides steeple-chases? I saw her ride through Whitford to-day, and she stared so hard into the carriage, that poor Violet pulled down her veil till we were out of the town.’
‘Well, she was married out of a boarding-school, came here the meekest, shyest, little shrinking creature, always keeping her eyelids cast down, and colouring at a word.’
Arthur thought there was a vicious look at his bride’s bending head, but he endured by the help of twisting the tassel of the sofa cushion, and with another laugh observed, ‘that all the lady’s shyness had been used up before he knew her.’
‘Then there was Lord George Wilmot, who ran away with a farmer’s daughter. She made quite a sensation; she was quite presentable, and very pretty and well-mannered—but such a temper! They used to be called George and the Dragon. Poor man! he had the most subdued air—’
‘There was a son of his in the Light Dragoons—’ began Arthur, hoping to lead away the conversation, ‘a great heavy fellow.’
‘Exactly so; it was the case with all of them. The Yorkshire farmer
