The Grand Sophy Read Online Free PDF

Fawnhope!”
    “Augustus,” announced Cecilia, putting up her chin, “will be remembered long after you have sunk into oblivion!”
    “By his creditors? I don’t doubt it. Will that compensate you for a lifetime spent in dodging duns?”
    Lady Ombersley could not repress a shudder. “Alas, my love, it is too true! You cannot know the mortification—but we will not speak of that!”
    “It is useless to speak to my sister of anything outside the covers of a novel from the lending library!” said Charles. “I might have supposed that she would be thankful, in the state to which this family has been reduced, to have been on the point of contracting even a respectable alliance! But no! She is offered not a respectable but a brilliant match, and she chooses to behave like any Bath miss, swooning and languishing over a poet! A poet! Good God, Mama, if the specimen of his talent which you were so ill advised as to read me—But I have no patience to argue further on that head! If you cannot prevail upon her to conduct herself in a manner worthy of her breeding she had better be sent down to Ombersley, to rusticate for a while, and see if that will bring her to her senses!”
    With this terrible threat he strode out of the room, leaving his sister to dissolve into tears, and his mother to recruit her strength through the medium of her vinaigrette.
    Between sobs Cecilia animadverted for some moments on the cruelty of fate, which had saddled her with a brother who was as heartless as he was tyrannical, and parents who were totally unable to enter into her feelings. Lady Ombersley, though sympathetic in the main, could not allow this to pass. Without taking it upon herself to answer for her husband’s sensibilities, she assured Cecilia that her own were extremely nice, making it perfectly possible for her to appreciate the anguish of a forbidden love.
    “When I was a girl, dearest, something of the same nature happened to me,” she said, sighing. “He was not a poet, of course, but I fancied myself very much in love with him. But it would not do, and in the end I was married to your papa, which was thought to be a splendid match, for in those days he had scarcely begun to run through his fortune, and—” She broke off, realizing that these reminiscences were infelicitous. “In short, Cecilia—and I should not be obliged to say this to you—persons of our order do not marry only to please themselves.”
    Cecilia was silenced, and could only hang down her head, dabbing at her eyes with an already damp handkerchief. She knew herself to have been a good deal indulged through the fondness of one parent and the cheerful indifference of the other, and was well aware that in discovering her inclination before permitting Lord Charlbury to address his suit to her Lady Ombersley had shown more consideration for her than would have been approved of by the greater part of her contemporaries. Cecilia might read novels, but she knew that the spirited behavior of her favorite heroines was not for her to imitate. She foresaw that she was doomed to spinster-hood; and this reflection was so melancholy that she drooped more than ever, and once more applied her handkerchief to her eyes.
    “Only think how happy your sister is!” said Lady Ombersley, in a heartening tone. “I am sure nothing could be more gratifying than to see her in her own home, with her dear baby, and James so attentive and obliging, and—and everything just what one would wish! I declare I do not believe that any love match could have turned out better, not that I mean to say that Maria is not sincerely attached to James! But she had not met him above half-a-dozen times when he asked Papa’s leave to speak to her, and her affections were not engaged. Naturally, she felt a strong degree of liking, or I should never— But Maria was such a good, pretty-behaved girl! She told me herself that she felt it to be her duty to accept such a respectable offer, with Papa in