“You! Old Mr. Trevor is very queer, I know; is he going to take up that odious French system, and arrange it without any reference to the girl? But surely, Maria, you would never countenance an iniquity like that?”
“Iniquity! are you sure it is an iniquity? In some points of view I approve of it greatly. Do you think I could not choose better husbands for the girls than they will ever choose for themselves? How is a girl to exercise any judgment in the matter? She takes the first man that comes, perhaps, or the first fool she thinks nice-looking, and what is there sacred in that?”
“I thought you were always the one to stand up for love,” said Miss Southwood. “I never pretend to know anything about it myself.”
“Oh, when there is love,” said Mrs. Stone, “that is another thing. But what do they know about love? It is fancy, it is not love; how should they know?”
“I am sure I can’t tell,” answered the unmarried sister, very demurely, “don’t ask me to give any opinion; you are the one that ought to know; and I have always heard you say, and understood you to uphold—”
“Yes, yes, yes!” cried the other, impatiently; “when a thing has been said once, one is held to it forever, in this unintelligent way. You never consider how unlike one case is to another, or take the circumstances into account. Besides, all I said referred to a sentiment already formed. I would never tear two young people asunder that were fond of each other, because one was rich and the other poor; that is a thing I could never be guilty of. But this is a very different matter. To take care that a girl like Lucy Trevor does not make a foolish choice, or even,” said Mrs. Stone, with a certain solemnity and deliberateness of utterance, “to direct her thoughts to some one eminently suitable—”
Miss Southwood looked at her with eager eyes. After the manner in which her suggestion had been received at their former interview, she did not venture to repeat it; but she knew by experience that a suggestion is sometimes very badly received to-day, and accepted, as a matter of course, or even energetically acted upon, to-morrow; so she said nothing, but with eager though concealed scrutiny watched her sister’s looks. Finding, however, that Mrs. Stone said nothing more, but pensively eat her chicken, she resumed, after awhile, her inquiries.
“I suppose Mr. Trevor has been consulting you,” she said, “and I am sure it was the very best thing he could do. But, after all, Lucy is only seventeen, poor little thing! and a good girl, with no nonsense about her. Does he want to marry her off so young, the poor child?”
“I think,” said Mrs. Stone, reflectively, turning her chair to the fire, “he does not want her to marry at all.”
“Oh!” cried Miss Southwood in dismay. She had not married herself, she professed at once, when the subject was mentioned, her entire incompetence to give any opinion; but the idea that a girl’s friends should wish her not to many filled her mind with amazement beyond words. The naïveté of her conviction on this point betrayed itself in her unfeigned wonder. She could not believe it. “I suppose,” she said, “that he wants to keep the money in the family; and that means that he will marry her to her cousin, that young man, that Mr. Rainy.”