Friendship and Folly: The Merriweather Chronicles Book I Read Online Free PDF

decease? (And that, of course, must all have been for Ann, since he had not been in a position to inconvenience her by his continued existence.) Was she not, even now, doing her utmost to insure that the tiresome girl might be comfortably settled in life?
    But--and be it ever so nebulous, a but existed--the fact remained that Ann never seemed to feel things as she ought. Mrs. Northcott was far from suspecting her of deliberately casting herself off that disastrous wall; but on the other hand her response to the surgeon’s declaration that her leg would never be completely straight again, nor her gait without awkwardness, was not at all the sort to allay the chagrined feelings in a mother’s bosom. Ann had neither wept nor stormed; she had merely said “Oh,” as if informed that there was no marmalade to be had for breakfast, and turned her head on the pillow to look out the window, toward Merriweather (it could not be seen, for a number of reasons, most of them trees, but she knew it was there). Remorse for having carelessly hazarded her future upon crumbling stone, bitter regret for might-have-beens, the realization of hopes, already frail, now slain beyond redemption---all these reflections, the suitable companions of her convalescence, appeared never to have touched her. Even when Mrs. Northcott had gone to her bedside, and stayed for some time, endeavoring, in calm and uncensorious language, to bring her to a suitable estimation of her situation, the impression had not been lasting: Mrs. Northcott admitted to doubts that it had been made at all. For this, and more, could not a mother be forgiven for wishing that, painful though it might prove, such a daughter would be at last brought to a true understanding of her past selfishness and folly? And that in its present consequences she would find a daily reminder to mend her undutiful ways?
    In short, no sooner had the solution come to mind, than Mrs. Northcott approved it. It only remained for her to decide how best it might be effected, and this she set herself to do. The rest of the journey to Hellwick Hall was singularly peaceful.
    Ann knew nothing of this at the time; she knew only, that her words had unaccountably brought about her mother’s silence, and caused that lady to place her hands á la Gloriana --a position which always denoted reflections of an uncommonly pleasing nature. It was many months before Ann was to discover the disservice she had done her friends by her ill-conceived defense; and by then, of course, there was nothing at all to be done about it.
    **

Chapter V

    Lord Meravon’s sister, Lady Thomasin St. Bees, once said of him, that he was of that class of men, who reject advice on principle if it comes from the lips of a female, and most especially if she happens to be of his house or blood. “If,” she added, “Julian had been Joab at the walls of Abel, the town would have been leveled to the ground, and heigh-ho for a Mother in Israel.”
    A shrewd woman, but entirely without tact, she had further limned her brother’s character, by declaring his ardent political convictions, to be based on nothing more than the fact that “he abominated change of any sort until he had thought about it for forty years and had it brought before a committee.”
    Surely a daunting collection of traits to confront, when one is a female plotting certain upheaval, seeking to recruit a confederate in an enemy camp. A confederate, however, Mrs. Northcott must have--for she had no illusions, of her ability to carry the day on her own. In Lady Frances and Mr. Parry, she faced adversaries who were curiously impervious to both cajolery and contempt; and it was rumored, that the phenomenon known as a London Season, was one of the few subjects on which Lady Frances had ever been roused to speak with something approaching discourtesy; going so far as to inquire of one lady, “what had ever led her to suppose, that several months of being primped, paraded and praised,