“What a bore it is!” said Sophy, with a yawn. “Why should we be obliged to marry more than the men are. It isn’t fair. Nobody finds fault with them, though they have dozens of affairs; but we’re drawn over the coals for nothing, a bit of fun. I’m sure I don’t want to marry Bertie, or any one. I’d a great deal rather not. So long as one has one’s amusement, it’s jolly enough.”
“If you could always be as young as you are now,” said Kate oracularly; “but even you are beginning to be passée, Sophy. It’s the pace, you know, as the men say—you need not make faces. The moment you are married you will be a girl again. As for me, I feel a grandmother.”
“You are old,” said Sophy compassionately; “and indeed you ought to go first.”
“I am just eighteen months older than you are,” said Kate, rousing herself in self-defence, “and with your light hair, you’ll go off sooner. Don’t be afraid; as soon as I have got you off my hands I shall take care of myself. But look here! What you’ve got to do is to study Herbert a little. Don’t take him up as if he were Jack or Tom. Study him. There is one thing you never can go wrong in with any of them,” said this experienced young woman. “Look as if you thought him the cleverest fellow that ever was; make yourself as great a fool as you can in comparison. That flatters them above everything. Ask his advice you know, and that sort of thing. The greatest fool I ever knew,” said Kate, reflectively, “was Fenwick, the adjutant. I made him wild about me by that.”
“He would need to be a fool to think you meant it,” said Sophy, scornfully; “you that have such an opinion of yourself.”
“I had too good an opinion of myself to have anything to say to him, at least; but it’s fun putting them in a state,” said Kate, pleased with the recollection. This was a sentiment which her sister fully shared, and they amused themselves with reminiscences of several such dupes ere they separated. Perhaps even the dupes were scarcely such dupes as these young ladies thought; but anyhow, they had never been, as Kate said, “the right sort of men.” Dropmore, etc., were always to the full as knowing as their pretty adversaries, and were not to be beguiled by any such specious pretences. And to tell the truth, I am doubtful how far Kate’s science was genuine. I doubt whether she was unscrupulous enough and good-tempered enough to carry out her own programme; and Sophy certainly was too careless, too feather brained, for any such scheme. She meant to marry Herbert because his recommendations were great, and because he lay in her way, as it were, and it would be almost a sin not to put forth a hand to appropriate the gifts of Providence; but if it had been necessary to “study” him, as her sister enjoined, or to give great pains to his subjugation, I feel sure that Sophy’s patience and resolution would have given way. The charm in the enterprise was that it seemed so easy; Whiteladies was a most desirable object; and Sophy, longing for fresh woods and pastures new, was rather attracted than repelled by the likelihood of having to spend the Winters abroad.
Mr. Farrel-Austin, for his part, received the young head of his family with anything but delight. He had been unable, in ordinary civility, to contradict the invitation his daughters had given, but took care to express his sentiments on the subject next day very distinctly—had they cared at all for those sentiments, which I don’t think they did. Their schemes, of course, were quite out of his range, and were not communicated to him; nor was he such a self-denying parent as to have been much consoled for his own loss of the family property by the possibility of one of his daughters stepping into possession of it. He thought it an ill-timed exhibition of their usual love of strangers, and love of company, and growled at them all day long until the time of the arrival, when he absented himself, to their great satisfaction, though it was intended as the crowning evidence of his displeasure. “Papa has been obliged to go out; he is so sorry, but hopes you will excuse him till dinner,” Kate said, when the girls came to receive their cousins at the door. “Oh, they won’t mind, I am sure,” said Sophy. “We shall have them all to ourselves, which will be much jollier.” Herbert’s brow clouded temporarily, for, though he did not love Mr. Farrel-Austin, he felt that his absence showed a want of that “proper respect” which was due to the head of the house. But under the gay influence of the girls the cloud speedily floated away.
They had gone early, by special prayer, as their stay was to be so short; and Kate had made the judicious addition of two men from the barracks to their little luncheon-party. “One for me, and one for Reine,” she had said to Sophy, “which will leave you a fair field.” The one whom Kate had chosen for herself was a middle-aged major, with a small property—a man who had hitherto afforded much “fun” to the party generally as a butt, but whose serious attentions Miss Farrel-Austin, at five-and-twenty, did not absolutely discourage. If nothing better came in the way, he might do, she felt. He had a comfortable income and a mild temper, and would not object to “fun.” Reine’s share was a foolish youth, who had not long joined the regiment; but as she was quite unconscious that he had been selected for her, Reine was happily free from all sense of being badly treated. He laughed at the jokes which Kate and Sophy made; and held his tongue otherwise—thus fulfilling all the duty for which he was told off. After this morning meal, which was so much gayer and more lively than anything at Whiteladies, the new-comers were carried off to see the house and the grounds, upon which many improvements had been made. Sophy was Herbert’s guide, and ran before him through all the new rooms, showing the new library, the morning-room, and the other additions. “This is one good of an ugly modern place,” she said. “You can never alter dear old Whiteladies, Bertie. If you did we should get up a crusade of all the Austins and all the antiquarians, and do something to you—kill you, I think; unless some weak-minded person like myself were to interfere.”
“I shall never put myself in danger,” he said, “though perhaps I am not such a fanatic about Whiteladies as you others.”
“Don’t!” said Sophy, raising her hand as if to stop his mouth. “If you say a word more I shall hate you. It is small, to be sure; and if you should have a very large family when you marry”—she went on, with a laugh—“but the Austins never have large families; that is one part of the curse, I suppose your Aunt Augustine would say! but for my part, I hate large families, and I think it is very grand to have a curse belonging to us. It is as good as a family ghost. What a pity that the monk and the nun don’t walk! But there is something in the great staircase. Did you ever see it? I never lived in Whiteladies, or I should have tried to see what it was.”