"A handsome, honest fellow, if you would only think so. He would not have been so badly off either, if he had not been forced to sell his commission to pay your debts. He had a fair chance too, of rising in the army, if he had not met with that misfortune. I think you very unreasonable to throw all the blame on him. What now remains for you to do, is to make yourself agreeable to his parents, and secure a home, such as it is, for us."
"I can't pretend to like that old man," and Sophy shrugged her shoulders.
"He's rather an amusing variety of the species," said Mrs. Rowly, "and the easiest person in the world to cajole. But once more, let me tell you, Mrs. Gilbert Rushmere, it is no use quarrelling with your bread and butter. Put on your hat, and let us take a turn in the open air, perhaps we may chance to meet the gentlemen."
And now they are gone to spy out the nakedness of the land we will tell our readers a little of their private history, and how the young soldier was deceived in his fortune-hunting speculation.
Mrs. Rowly was the widow of a custom-house officer, and for many years lived very comfortably, nay, affluently, upon the spoils which he gathered illegally in his office. Their only child, Sophia, though very far from pretty, was a genteel-looking girl, and educated at a fashionable boarding-school; but just as she arrived at womanhood, the father was detected in his unlawful pursuits, and so heavily fined, that it caused his utter ruin, and having incurred heavy debts to keep up an appearance beyond his station, he ended his days in prison, leaving his wife and daughter to shift for themselves in the best manner they could.
With the assistance of a brother, who was in the grocery line of business, and of whom they had always been ashamed in their more prosperous days, Mrs. Rowly set up a small boarding-house, in one of the little cross streets in the Minories, and just contrived to keep her head above water for several years, until Sophia was turned of seven-and-twenty. The young lady dressed and flirted, and tried her best to get a husband, but all her endeavours proved futile.
She was ambitious, too, of marrying a gentleman, and looked down with contempt upon shopkeepers' assistants, clerks in lawyers' offices, and mechanics, until the time had nearly slipped by when she could hope, without fortune, to marry at all.
It was then that her mother, finding herself deeply involved, circulated the report in her neighbourhood, that Sophy had been left six thousand pounds on the death of a cousin, a consumptive boy, who could not reasonably be expected to live many months.
The bait took. Miss Rowly was invited to houses she never before had hoped to enter; and at a ball, given by the mother of an officer in Gilbert's regiment, she met the handsome young man, just raised to the rank of a subaltern, who had so gallantly saved the life of Captain Fitzmorris.
Though still rather countrified in his appearance, she was instantly smitten by his frank, free manners, and his fine manly figure. Some foolish fellow, in the shape of a friend, whispered in Gilbert's ear that the young lady would have a fortune. In a rash moment, when a little heated by wine, and won by her soft flatteries, he made her an offer of marriage. This was instantly accepted, particularly as Gilbert, boy-like, had boasted of his old ancestral home, and the noble family from which he was descended. And besides all this, he was an officer in the army, and likely to rise in his profession, under the patronage of a wealthy nobleman like Lord Wilton. Miss Rowly was charmed with her future prospects.