“It is a mortifying necessity to confess, but the truth is, the ham has to be taken out of soak and put on to boil for dinner, and I have got to see it done; also there are gooseberry tarts and lemon custard to be prepared for the dessert, and I have got to go and do it. I wonder if uncle and cousin St. Gerald, who both love their palates, (low be it spoken,) will ever get anything fit to eat when the gorgeous Mrs. India takes my place!” and so, laughing and escaping, she ran off.
CHAPTER XVII.
PROGNOSTICS.
“With caution judge of probability;
Things thought unlikely, e’en impossible,
Experience often shows us to be true.”—Shakspeare.
The world-honoured and time-honoured bard whose lines are quoted above habitually looked beneath the mere plausible surface of possibility, and from the deep insight thereby gained, often put forth oracles at opposition to the usual routine of thought and expectation, yet which the eternal experiences of life continue to endorse as truths.
Were I writing a merely fictitious narrative, it would be in order now (after the custom-sanctioned manner of story-tellers) to describe the cruel opposition the lovers met from tyrannical parents, guardians, &c. But I am writing a true story—in this particular at least, “stranger than fiction”—and so have no such events to relate.
It happened as Rosalie had predicted—she met no serious opposition to the current of her affections. And if we look into the causes of that leniency on the part of her guardians, we shall not find their non-resistance so unaccountable, after all.
Left without father or mother—without near relatives or natural protectors, except a youthful step-dame, now too entirely absorbed in the contemplation of her own marriage, and an old uncle, to whom until two years past she had been a perfect stranger, Miss Vivian was thus not the first object of interest to any one around her.
It is true, that when Rosalie made known her purpose to Mrs. Vivian, the lady opposed the contemplated marriage with entreaties and tears; but finding that entreaties and tears only distressed the maiden without shaking her resolution, the young step-mother felt neither the right nor the inclination to attempt the arbitrary control of Miss Vivian’s destiny. In yielding her final consent, the sweet-lipped lady said, amid falling tears—“Oh! were he well established, Rosalie, there is no one in the world to whom I would resign you with so much pleasure and comfort, as to him whom you have chosen. And well I know, and deeply I feel, that even now, from this low point of life—with you by his side—with you for an incentive—with his high moral principles and intellectual faculties, and in this favoured country, he must rise, he must accomplish a brilliant destiny. But O, Rosalie, my child, in the meanwhile, I dread for you those toilsome, terrible first steps on the road to success! O Rosalie, pause! How much wiser to wait until he has conquered success!”