Lady Bell was the last person in the household at St. Bevis’s to learn what was in store for her. By the time she learned it, every preliminary had been agreed upon, the marriage contract was drawn out, the day all but named. Mr. Godwin had answered in the affirmative for his niece, Mrs. Die was perfectly indifferent.
Mrs. Kitty was indifferent and malicious at the same time, because this poor upstart fiddle-faddle Lady Bell was to pass beyond Mrs. Kitty’s authority, quitting St. Bevis’s with a bride’s honours—such as they were, of which Mrs. Kitty’s Amazon queen, Mrs. Die, had been monstrously defrauded in her day.
Even Mr. Sneyd and Mr. Greenwood looked on the marriage of Squire Trevor with Lady Bell, for the most part, favourably. What little rue the men felt was chiefly on their own account; for her sake they were inclined, on due reflection, to welcome the match as not altogether out of course, and perhaps the best thing that could be hoped for Lady Bell.
St. Bevis’s had not so fair a reputation, or such a promise of dowries for young ladies that it should draw wooers to Lady Bell. Of such wooers as would risk an association with Squire Godwin—a partnership in bets, an opposite book at Newmarket, or a night with him at cards—how many even of the likeliest young fellows would present characters half so honest for husbands as that of Squire Trevor, and rent-rolls by many degrees so unencumbered as that of Trevor Court?
Finally, as a compensation and triumphant conclusion of the matter, these gentlemen—Lady Bell’s most considerate and indulgent friends—were guilty of proposing in their own minds, for the innocent girl’s comfort, that she would in all probability be left a young widow,—if she played her cards well, a rich young widow,—while she had still plenty of time and opportunity to please her taste in a second husband.
But Lady Bell was utterly incredulous, dumb-foundered, adverse, obdurate, only too vehemently so to begin with.
Certainly, she had often heard of such marriages as that which she was required to make. Ay, and she had heard them insisted on as a portionless girl’s simple, solemn duty. While, on the other hand, she had known all marriages contracted rashly, impudently and in defiance of friends, characterized by no less an authority than Lady Lucie Penruddock as acts of gross impropriety and disgraceful insubordination, which ought to compromise, and did compromise, a young woman fatally, and bring upon her punishment in proportion to the offence.
Lady Bell was not able to persuade herself that her former idol, Lady Lucie, would have been on her side in this question. Lady Bell’s poor heart sunk like lead when she took Lady Lucie’s opinions into consideration. She dared not think of Lady Lucie during the tumult and rebellion of these May days at St. Bevis’s.
But through all the girl’s elaborately artificial training, there was the young heart beating fast and warm with true instincts of what meetness was, of what sympathy meant, of what “the great passion” might prove.
In the remote background of all Lady Bell’s girlishly brave proud schemes and undertakings to keep up her studies and gentlewoman’s accomplishments, to improve herself, to spend her time not amiss, even amidst the neglect and disorder of St. Bevis’s, there had hovered always the bright sweet hope of deliverance and a deliverer.