SLIGHTED.
Some hours earlier on the same evening, Eleanor, dressing for dinner and the ball in her spacious bedroom at Mrs. Duff-Scott's house, felt that she, at any rate, was arming herself for conquest. No misgivings of any sort troubled the serene and rather shallow waters of that young lady's mind. While her sisters were tossing to and fro in the perturbations of the tender passion, she had calmly taken her bearings, so to speak, and was sailing a straight course. She had summed up her possibilities and arranged her programme accordingly. In short, she had made up her mind to marry Mr. Westmoreland—who, if not all that could be desired in a man and a husband, was well enough—and thereby to take a short cut to Europe, and to all those other goals towards which her feet were set. As Mr. Westmoreland himself boasted, some years afterwards, Eleanor was not a fool; and I feel sure that this negative excellence, herein displayed, will not fail to commend itself to the gentle reader of her little history.
She had made up her mind to marry Mr. Westmoreland, and to-night she meant that he should ask her. Looking at her graceful person in the long glass, with a soft smile on her face, she had no doubt of her power to draw forth that necessary question at any convenient moment. It had not taken her long to learn her power; nor had she failed to see that it had its limitations, and that possibly other and greater men might be unaffected by it. She was a very sensible young woman, but I would not have any one run off with the idea that she was mercenary and calculating in the sordid sense. No, she was not in love, like Elizabeth and Patty; but that was not her fault. And in arranging her matrimonial plans she was actuated by all sorts of tender and human motives. In the first place, she liked her admirer, who was fond of her and a good comrade, and whom she naturally invested with many ideal excellences that he did not actually possess; and she liked (as will any single woman honestly tell me that she does not?) the thought of the dignities and privileges of a wife, and of that dearer and deeper happiness that lay behind. She was in haste to snatch at them while she had the chance, lest the dreadful fate of a childless old maid should some day overtake her—as undoubtedly it did overtake the very prettiest girls sometimes. And she was in love with the prospect of wealth at her own disposal, after her narrow experiences; not from any vulgar love of luxury and display, but for the sake of the enriched life, bright and full of beauty and knowledge, that it would make possible for her sisters as well as herself. If these motives seem poor and inadequate, in comparison with the great motive of all (as no doubt they are), we must remember that they are at the bottom of a considerable proportion of the marriages of real life, and not perhaps the least successful ones. It goes against me to admit so much, but one must take things as one finds them.
Elizabeth came in to lace up her bodice—Elizabeth, whose own soft eyes were shining, and who walked across the floor with an elastic step, trailing her long robes behind her; and Eleanor vented upon her some of the fancies which were seething in her small head. "Don't we look like brides?" she said, nodding at their reflections in the glass.
"Or bridesmaids," said Elizabeth. "Brides wear silks and satins mostly, I believe."
"If they only knew it," said Eleanor reflectively, "muslin and lace are much more becoming to the complexion. When I am married, Elizabeth, I think I shall have my dress made of that 'woven dew' that we were looking at in the Exhibition the other day."
"My dear girl, when you are married you will do nothing so preposterous. Do you suppose we are always going to let Mrs. Duff-Scott squander her money on us like this? I was telling her in her room just now that we must begin to draw the line. It is too much. The lace on these gowns cost a little fortune. But lace is always family property, and I shall pick it off and make her take it back again. So just be very careful not to tear it, dear."
"She won't take it back," said Eleanor, fingering it delicately; "she looks on us as her children, for whom nothing is too good. And perhaps—perhaps some day we may have it in our power to do things for her."
"I wish I could think so. But there is no chance of that."
"How can you tell? When we are married, we may be very well off—"