“I could scarcely have dreamed,” answered Lady Valeria, slowly turning towards her grandchild, and smiling with superior dignity, “that any member of our family would use the very words of the clown in the ring. But, perhaps, as I always try to think, you are more to be pitied than condemned. Partly through your own fault, and partly through peculiar circumstances, you have lost those advantages which a young lady of our house is entitled to. You have never been at Court; you have seen no society; you have never even been in London!”
“Alas! it is all too true, grandmamma. But how often have you told me that I never must hope, in this degenerate age, to find any good model to imitate! And you have always discouraged me, by presenting yourself as the only one for me to follow.”
“You are quite right,” said the ancient lady, failing to observe the turn of thought, as Alice was certain that she would do, else scarcely would she have ventured it; “but you do not make the most of even that advantage. You can read and write, perhaps better than you ought, or better than used to be thought at all needful; but you cannot come into a room, or make a tolerable curtsey; and you spend all your time with dogs, and poets, and barrows of manure, and little birds!”
“Now really, madam, you are too hard upon me. I may have had a barrow-load of poets; but more than a month ago, you gave orders that I was not to have one bit more of manure.”
“Certainly I did, and high time it was. A young gentlewoman to dabble in worms, and stable-stuff, and filthiness! However, I did not send for you to speak about such little matters. What I have to say is for your own good; and I will trouble you not to be playing with your hands, but just listen to me.”
“I beg your pardon,” said Alice, gently; “I did not know I was moving my hands. I will listen, without doing that any more.”
“Now, my dear child,” began Lady Valeria, being softened by the dutiful manner and sweet submission of the girl: “whatever we do is for your own good. You are not yet old enough to judge what things may profit, and what may hurt you. Even I, who had been brought up in a wholly superior manner, could not at your age have thought of anything. I was ready to be led by wiser people; although I had seen a good deal of the world. And you, who have seen nothing, must be only too glad to do the same. You know quite well, what has long been settled, between your dear father and myself, about what is to be done with you.”
“To be done with me!” exclaimed poor Alice, despite her resolve to hold her tongue. “To be done with me! As if I were just a bundle of rags, to be got rid of!”
“Prouder and handsomer girls than you,” answered Lady Valeria, quietly—for she loved to provoke her grandchild, partly because it was so hard to do—“have become bundles of rags, by indulging just such a temper as yours is. You will now have the goodness to listen to me, without any vulgar excitement. Your marriage with Captain Chapman has for a very long time been agreed upon. It is high time now to appoint the day. Sir Remnant Chapman has done me the honour of a visit upon that subject. He is certainly a man of the true old kind; though his birth is comparatively recent. I was pleased with him; and I have pledged myself to the marriage, within three months from this day.”
“It cannot be! it shall not be! You may bury me, but not marry me. Who gave you the right to sell me? And who made me to be sold? You selfish, cold-hearted—no, I beg your pardon. I know not what I am saying.”