“Does my Aunt force you to it, Lizzie?” inquired Mrs Maulfrey, pleasantly intrigued.
“Oh no, no!” Elizabeth replied earnestly. “You know Mama’s tenderness. She is all consideration, all sensibility! It is only my own consciousness of my Duty to the Family that leads me to take a step so—so disastrous to my happiness.”
“M-mortgages,” said Horatia cryptically.
“Pelham, I suppose?” said Mrs Maulfrey.
“Of course it is Pelham,” replied Charlotte with a touch of bitterness. “Everything is his fault. Ruin stares us in the face.”
“Poor Pelham!” Elizabeth said, with a sigh for her absent brother. “I am afraid he is very extravagant.”
“It’s his gambling debts, I take it,” opined Mrs Maulfrey. “My Aunt seemed to think that even your Portions ...” She left the sentence delicately unfinished.
Elizabeth flushed, but Horatia said: “You can’t blame P-Pel. It’s in the blood. One of us must m-marry Rule. Lizzie’s the eldest and the p-prettiest, but Charlotte would do very well. Lizzie’s promised to Edward Heron.”
“Not “promised”, dearest,” Elizabeth said in a low voice. “We only—hoped, if he could but get his Captaincy, perhaps Mama would consent.”
“Even supposing it, my love,” said Mrs Maulfrey with great good sense, “what—what, I ask of you, is a Captain of a Line Regiment when compared with the Earl of Rule? And from all I hear the young man has the most meagre of fortunes, and who, pray, is to buy his promotion?”