“But I don’t resign myself. I shall do what I can against it. What is the good of calling the people’s wickedness Providence? You said in your letter it was Mr. Lassman’s fault we had lost our money. Has he run away with it all?”
“No, dear, you don’t understand. There were great speculations: he meant to gain. It was all about mines and things of that sort. He risked too much.”
“I don’t call that Providence: it was his improvidence with our money, and he ought to be punished. Can’t we go to law and recover our fortune? My uncle ought to take measures, and not sit down by such wrongs. We ought to go to law.”
“My dear child, law can never bring back money lost in that way. Your uncle says it is milk spilled upon the ground. Besides, one must have a fortune to get any law: there is no law for people who are ruined. And our money has only gone along with other people’s. We are not the only sufferers: others have to resign themselves besides us.”
“But I don’t resign myself to live at Sawyer’s Cottage and see you working for sixpences and shillings because of that. I shall not do it. I shall do what is more befitting our rank and education.”
“I am sure your uncle and all of us will approve of that, dear, and admire you the more for it,” said Mrs. Davilow, glad of an unexpected opening for speaking on a difficult subject. “I didn’t mean that you should resign yourself to worse when anything better offered itself. Both your uncle and aunt have felt that your abilities and education were a fortune for you, and they have already heard of something within your reach.”
“What is that, mamma?” some of Gwendolen’s anger gave way to interest, and she was not without romantic conjectures.
“There are two situations that offer themselves. One is in a bishop’s family, where there are three daughters, and the other is in quite a high class of school; and in both, your French, and music, and dancing—and then your manners and habits as a lady, are exactly what is wanted. Each is a hundred a year—and—just for the present,”—Mrs. Davilow had become frightened and hesitating,—“to save you from the petty, common way of living that we must go to—you would perhaps accept one of the two.”
“What! be like Miss Graves at Madame Meunier’s? No.”
“I think, myself, that Dr. Monpert’s would be more suitable. There could be no hardship in a bishop’s family.”