CHAPTER XI.
When breakfast was over, and the gentlemen had taken their departure, Louisa was amazingly laughed at by her sisters about her new lover.
He was mimicked and ridiculed in every possible way; walk, air, manner, voice, modes of expression, ways of looking, &c. &c.; till the girls had perfectly fatigued themselves with laughing.
We have heard it said, that it was a service of danger for any man to become the admirer of one of a large family; for that, let him be ever so successful in talking the lady of his choice into love, she was sure the moment he absented himself to be laughed out of it again by her sisters. It is no wonder, then, that poor Sir James did not escape. Lady Arden, however, and Mrs. Dorothea came from time to time to the rescue of the little baronet's memory.
"Heedless creatures!" said Aunt Dorothea, "how little thought you give to the future!"
"I only hope he may be serious, and really propose for Louisa," said Lady Arden; "and if he should, I trust she will have the sense to pause before she rejects so advantageous an offer."
"But then, mamma, is he not a fool?" asked Louisa.
"Why no, my dear, not exactly that. Indeed, I know a great many ill-tempered, reserved sort of men, without a grain more sense, who pass for Solomons! He is a vain little man, certainly; and perhaps too goodnatured. But then, only consider what a vastly eligible establishment it would be: you would have rank yourself, and be at once restored to the wealth and station lost to you all by the death of your father; and what, my dear, is still more important, you would be rescued in time from the comparative poverty, and consequent obscurity into which you must ultimately sink, if you survive me unmarried."
What dilemmas so humiliating as those to which Pride reduces its votaries!
Lady Arden, by nature amiable, affectionate, and high-minded; but by education tainted with false pride, thus stooped to the very depth of meanness, unconscious of degradation; and sacrificed her purest feelings to the supposed necessity of securing to her daughters that artificial station in life which a system of unjust monopoly had for a time given them, and of which the same system had again deprived them.