'I don't set much store by Mistress Forrester's manner, Aunt Ratcliffe,' Dorothy said; 'an ill-bred country child, who, of course, is ignorant, so we will pardon her.'
'Ignorant, yes,' Mistress Ratcliffe said, 'but her pretty face.'
'Pretty!' Dorothy screamed, 'Pretty! Nay, aunt, you cannot call that baby-faced chit pretty. No air; no breeding; mere dairymaid's beauty. It makes me laugh to think how proud she was of her fine gown and cap, which only showed her awkward gait the more.' And Mistress Dorothy fingered her Flemish lace and the string of beads round her short, thick neck, with profound belief in her own charms.
If Lucy's beauty was that of a milkmaid, Dorothy's was decidedly of a different character. Her complexion was sallow and pale; her hair, which was by no means abundant, was of the sandy hue, which she tried to persuade herself was like the Queen's. Her eyes were of a greenish colour, and deeply set under a heavy forehead, and her figure was angular and ungraceful.
Fine feathers do not always make a fine bird, and Dorothy Ratcliffe, although with what in those days was considered to be a fortune at her back, did not find fervent suitors for her favour. She was, therefore, very ready to fall in with Mistress Ratcliffe's wishes, and take pains to ingratiate herself with George, failing Humphrey, whose position as one of Mr Sidney's esquires, made him the more desirable of the two brothers.
Dorothy Ratcliffe was the child of George's uncle, who was a recluse living at Tunbridge. He was a scholar and a pedant, and concerned himself but little about his only child, whose fortune was inherited from her mother.
Marriages in those days were generally settled for the people principally concerned, with or without their consent, as it happened, and Master Ratcliffe and George's mother had a sort of tacit understanding with each other that Dorothy should take herself and her fortune to Hillbrow Place.
Dorothy was not unwilling to find herself mistress there, but she had always a lingering hope that Humphrey would at last be a victim to her charms, and then it would be easy to throw George over.
But things did not look very promising, and Dorothy asked, in an irritable tone, before she parted with her aunt for the night,—
'Is Humphrey so taken up with the grand folk that he cannot find the time to pay his dutiful respects to you, aunt?'