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Thirsk. When Sir Francis had died she had renewed her entreaties, but without much hope of being attended to. It distressed her that Venetia should say she had outgrown her girlhood, but she could not deny it: Venetia was then twenty-two, perilously near to being on the shelf.
    “Without ever having been   off it, Sir John—though that‟s not precisely what I mean, only that it is a wicked shame, so beautiful as she is, and so full of liveliness, besides having the best disposition imaginable! For my part, I hold that aunt of hers pretty cheap! She never made a real push to persuade Sir Francis to let Venetia go to London for a season when the poor child first came out, and if she has urged her to go now that he‟s dead   I have heard nothing of it! I believe her to be as selfish as her brother was, and if it were not for the expense, and our own girls to bring out—for even if anything   should   come of that attachment between Clara and Conway, which I don‟t at all reckon on, I am determined that all five must and shall be presented at
    Court!— well, as I say, if it were not for that I should be strongly tempted to take her to London myself, and I shouldn‟t wonder at it if she made  a very respectable marriage, even though she isn‟t in the first blush of youth! Only, you may depend upon it she would refuse to leave  Aubrey,” she added in a despondent tone. “And soon it will be too late, if only she knew it!”
    Venetia did know it, but since she could see no remedy while Conway remained

    obstinately abroad she continued to make the best of things. Lady Denny would have been  astonished had she been allowed to know with what misgiving Venetia regarded the future. For  any female in her position it was bleak indeed, and seemed to offer her no choice between  marriage with Edward Yardley or the life of an ageing, and probably unwanted, spinster in her  brother‟s household. Mistress of an easy competence, it was convention and not dependence that  would force her to remain at Undershaw. Single ladies did not live alone. Sisters, past the  marriageable age, might do it; years and years ago the Lady Eleanor Butler and her dear friend,  Miss Sarah Ponsonby, had done it, but in the teeth of parental opposition. They had fled to a  cottage somewhere in Wales, renouncing the world just as if they had been nuns; and since they  were still living there and had never, so far as anyone knew, stirred from their retreat, it was to be  inferred that they were content.  But Venetia was no eccentric, and even had she possessed a  bosom friend she would not for an instant have entertained the thought of setting up house with  her: marriage to Edward would be preferable to such a manage. And without indulging her fancy  with girlish dreams of a noble and handsome suitor Venetia felt that marriage with another than  Edward would be the most agreeable solution to her difficulties.
    She had never been in love; and at five-and-twenty her expectations were not high. Her  only acquaintance with romance lay between the covers of the books she had read; and if she had  once awaited with confidence the arrival on her scene of a Sir Charles Grandison it had not been  long before commonsense banished such optimism. In the days when she had now  and then  attended the Assemblies in York she had attracted a great deal of admiration, and more than one  promising young gentleman, first struck by her beauty and then captivated by her frank manners  and the charm of her smiling eyes, would have been very  happy to have followed up a mere  ballroom acquaintanceship. Unfortunately there was no possibility of following it up in the  accepted mode, and although several susceptible gentlemen inveighed bitterly against the  barbarity of a parent who would permit no  visitor to enter his house none of them was so deeply  heart-smitten after standing up with the lovely Miss Lanyon for one country-dance as to cast