Frederica Read Online Free PDF

Valerian, Asafoetida Drops, Camphorated Spirits of Lavender, and any other paregoric or restorative recommended to her by her friends or by the maker’s advertizement. Unlike Lady Buxted, she was neither ill-tempered nor hardfisted. She had a faint, plaintive voice which, when she was thwarted, merely became fainter and more exhausted; and she was as ready to squander fortunes upon her children as upon herself. Unfortunately, her jointure (described by the Ladies Jevington and Buxted as an easy competence) was not large enough to enable her to live, without management and economy, in the style to which, she said, she was accustomed; and as she was too invalidish to study these arts, she was for ever outrunning the constable. She had been Alverstoke’s pensioner for years; and although heaven knew how much she wished to be independent of his generosity she could not but feel that since her handsome son was his heir it was his duty to provide also for her two daughters.
    As the elder of these, Miss Chloë Dauntry, was some weeks short of her seventeenth birthday, her presentation had not exercised Mrs Dauntry’s mind until she learned, from various garbled sources, that Alverstoke was planning to give a magnificent ball in honour of Miss Jane Buxted. A weak female she might be, but in defence of her beloved children, she declared, she could become a lioness. In this guise she descended upon Alverstoke, armed with her most powerful weapon: her vinaigrette.
    She made no demands, for that was not her way. When he entered the saloon, she came towards him, trailing shawls and draperies, and holding out her hands, which were exquisitely gloved in lavender kid. “Dear Alverstoke!” she uttered, raising huge, sunken eyes to his face, and bestowing one of her wistful smiles upon him. “My kind benefactor! How can I thank you?”
    Wholly ignoring her left hand, he briefly clasped the other, saying: “Thank me for what?”
    “So like you!” she murmured. “But although you may forget your generosity, I cannot! Oh, I am quite in disgrace with poor Harriet, and the girls, for venturing out-of-doors in such chilly weather, but I felt it was the least I could do! You are a great deal too good!”
    “Well, that’s something new, at all events,” he remarked. “Sit down, Lucretia, and let me have the word with no bark on it! What have I inadvertently done to excite your gratitude?”
    Nothing had ever been known to disturb the saintliness of Mrs Dauntry’s voice and demeanour; she replied, as she sank gracefully into a chair: “Dissembler! I know you too well to be taken-in: you don’t like to be thanked—and, indeed, if I were to thank you for all your goodness to me and mine, your never-failing support, your kindness to my loved ones, I fear I should become what you call a dead bore! Chloë, dear child, calls you our fairy godfather!”
    “She must be a wet-goose!” he responded.
    “Oh, she thinks no one the equal of her magnificent Cousin Alverstoke!” said Mrs Dauntry, gently laughing. “You are quite first-oars with her, I assure you!”
    “No need to put yourself in a worry over that,” he said. “She’ll recover!”
    “You are too naughty!” Mrs Dauntry said playfully. “You hope to circumvent me, but to no avail, I promise you! Well do you know that I am here to thank you—yes, and to scold you!—for coming—as I, alas, could not!—to Endymion’s assistance. That beautiful horse! Complete to a shade, he tells me! It is a great deal too good of you.”
    “So that’s what you came to thank me for, is it?” said his lordship, a sardonic look in his eye. “You shouldn’t have ventured out on such an unnecessary errand: I said, when he joined, that I would keep him decently mounted.”
    “So generous!” she sighed. “He is deeply sensible of it! As for me, I wonder sometimes what must have become of me when I was bereft of my beloved husband if I had not been able to depend upon your support through