“Ah, you may say so, my dear; but I know better. She would jump to have him. All girls like handsome young clergymen, as I know to my cost. Ah, Mr Lorton,” went on Lady Dasher, with a sad expressive shake of her head, “marriage is a sad lottery, a sad lottery! I once thought of marrying into the church, too, when my poor dear papa was alive. Perhaps it would have been a happier lot for me if I had done so! He was such a dear, nice clergyman, and looked so well in his canonicals—such a truly evangelical minister! I could listen to his sermons for hours without feeling the slightest fatigue!”
“Thank goodness, then, he wasn’t our papa!” exclaimed the saucy Seraphine. “I’m certain that I wouldn’t have been able to listen to his sermons so long!”
“Ah, my dear,” groaned her mother at her levity, “always frivolous, Seraphine! I’m afraid you will never marry a pious, holy man, as I would wish!”
“Not if I know it, ma!” she retorted, so heartily that both her sister Bessie and I—in spite of my anxiety about Min—could not but join in her catching laughter. “No,” continued the pert and impetuous young lady, “when I enter the holy estate of matrimony I shall choose a gay soldier laddie. None of your solemn-faced parsons for me! If they were all like our good old vicar, whom I would take to-morrow if he asked me, it would be quite a different thing; but they are not. They are all too steady and starch and stiff now-a-days. They look as if butter would not melt in their mouths!”
“Ah, my dear!” said her mother, “you will not think so by-and-by. ‘Beggars mustn’t be choosers.’ You have got nothing but your face for your fortune, you know, although it would have been very different if my poor dear papa had been alive!”
“What, my face, ma?” said her dutiful daughter, “I’m sure I hope not! Really, I’m very well satisfied with it;” and, getting up and going to the mirror, she set about altering the riband in her hair, humming the while the old ballad—
“‘My face is my fortune, kind sir,’ she said,
‘Kind sir,’ she said, ‘sir,’ she said;
‘My face is my fortune, kind sir,’ she said.”
I did not like to press any more inquiries with reference to Mr Mawley’s rumoured engagement, thinking they would look too pointed, disclosing my interest in the affair,—however much I was transported with the feelings of mingled jealousy, doubt, and uncertainty, that were preying on my heart; consequently, I now took my leave, all the suspicions and fears, which Shuffler’s news had given rise to, more rife than ever:—the renewed hope that Miss Pimpernell’s cheery address had inspired me with, completely dispelled.
I’m afraid my anxiety was only too apparent; for, Seraphine Dasher whispered to me as I went out, “I don’t believe a word of it, there! It is only one of those absurd ‘true stories’ that ma is always getting hold of.”
But I wouldn’t be comforted.