Sally James Read Online Free PDF

poor uncle married, and her entire ménage.'
    'But she – Charlotte, that is, is your cousin!'
    'If she chooses to associate with people of that order that is her affair. I do not.'
    'I doubt if she has any choice!' Prudence retorted heatedly. 'I understand that her father made his wife her guardian, so she has no alternative but to live with her. And how is she to meet suitable men in that household? Even if she had a huge fortune the connection would do her harm.'
    'Her fortune? What do you know of that?' he asked sharply.
    'Only what Charlotte herself has said. She told me she did not know how much it was, only that it was small, a little from her mother and almost nothing from her father. And I suppose that if Lady Mottesford was left very little she will wish to give her own daughter enough to marry on, and may not be able to spare any for Charlotte.'
    'I see,' he responded slowly. 'Have you met the obnoxious Hubert yet?'
    'Yes. They brought him to call. Charlotte is afraid she will be made to marry him, so it is even more important to put her in the way of meeting more suitable men.'
    'Why do you suppose he is wanting to marry her? That sort of creature is out for all he can get, and would hardly be likely to pursue a girl with no fortune.'
    'What he might consider a reasonable fortune could be different from your own estimates,' Prudence pointed out. 'I was not told whether he worked for a living, and what his own circumstances are, but to many such as he even a few hundred a year would be affluence they could never have expected.'
    'Possibly. I believe his father is a tailor, but not one of the most esteemed.'
    'Not if he made the coat Mr Clutterbuck was wearing when he called!' Prudence said with a gurgle of laughter. 'Aunt Lavinia is convinced he wore corsets, he was so nipped in at the waist!'
    'That would not surprise me. He has ambitions to be a dandy, I suspect, but neither the figure nor talent to achieve it.
    'Well, I shall make a point of introducing Charlotte to my friends, even if you mean to abandon her,' Prudence said with sudden determination. 'I cannot endure to think of her with no alternative but to marry him! A tailor's son! Was he ever apprenticed in the trade himself?'
    'I have no idea. Probably he started life as a footman, expecting to profit by his aunt's recommendation, until she rose in the world. He has that obsequious air some of the more incapable fellows adopt.'
    'What was his aunt?' Prudence asked, her avid curiosity overcoming her discretion and sense of what was proper.
    'Didn't you know? No, I suppose she would not have wished it known, and has probably enforced Charlotte's silence by all sorts of dire threats. My uncle, you see, was a miserly curmudgeon. None of his relatives would visit him, for they did not relish being ordered out of the house at a moment's notice if they offended him, or disregarded some notion of penny pinching he had acquired, such as having only one candle in each bedroom, and that a tallow one, and being expected to douse it five minutes after retiring!'
    'How dreadful!' Prudence commented, startled at learning this about Charlotte's father.
    'He could keep only those servants too old to leave, and more often than not Charlotte was without a governess. Then Mrs Potter arrived. She was the cook first of all, then when his housekeeper left he said she could do both jobs. As she had some learning, being able to read and write, and cast accounts, she offered to teach Charlotte until she could be said to be old enough to do without a governess. That was three years ago, and my uncle must have thought he had found the solution to all his problems. He soon realised that if he married her he would not only save her salary, but she would be unable to leave him, and she was very willing to acquire a title. My uncle did not discover Emily's existence until after the knot was tied, when she was brought from some relative and joined the family.'
    'Emily. She is called Emma