"Yes, indeed," continued the squire. "So it is; it is very, very—" But Lady Arabella had fainted. She was a woman who generally had her feelings and her emotions much under her own control; but what she now heard was too much for her. When she came to her senses, the first words that escaped her lips were, "Dear Mary!"
But the household had to sleep on the news before it could be fully realised. The squire was not by nature a mercenary man. If I have at all succeeded in putting his character before the reader, he will be recognised as one not over attached to money for money's sake. But things had gone so hard with him, the world had become so rough, so ungracious, so full of thorns, the want of means had become an evil so keenly felt in every hour, that it cannot be wondered at that his dreams that night should be of a golden elysium. The wealth was not coming to him. True. But his chief sorrow had been for his son. Now that son would be his only creditor. It was as though mountains of marble had been taken from off his bosom.
But Lady Arabella's dreams flew away at once into the seventh heaven. Sordid as they certainly were, they were not absolutely selfish. Frank would now certainly be the first commoner in Barsetshire; of course he would represent the county; of course there would be the house in town; it wouldn't be her house, but she was contented that the grandeur should be that of her child. He would have heaven knows what to spend per annum. And that it should come through Mary Thorne! What a blessing she had allowed Mary to be brought into the Greshamsbury nursery! Dear Mary!
"She will of course be one now," said Beatrice to her sister. With her, at the present moment, "one" of course meant one of the bevy that was to attend her at the altar. "Oh dear! how nice! I shan't know what to say to her to-morrow. But I know one thing."
"What is that?" asked Augusta.
"She will be as mild and as meek as a little dove. If she and the doctor had lost every shilling in the world, she would have been as proud as an eagle." It must be acknowledged that Beatrice had had the wit to read Mary's character aright.
But Augusta was not quite pleased with the whole affair. Not that she begrudged her brother his luck, or Mary her happiness. But her ideas of right and wrong—perhaps we should rather say Lady Amelia's ideas—would not be fairly carried out.
"After all, Beatrice, this does not alter her birth. I know it is useless saying anything to Frank."
"Why, you wouldn't break both their hearts now?"
"I don't want to break their hearts, certainly. But there are those who put their dearest and warmest feelings under restraint rather than deviate from what they know to be proper." Poor Augusta! she was the stern professor of the order of this philosophy; the last in the family who practised with unflinching courage its cruel behests; the last, always excepting the Lady Amelia.