'So that I shall have the agreeable consciousness of being married purely for my money. I am afraid poor dear papa's scheme will fail; and I wish, aunt, you had never told me of it.'
'That was not left to my discretion; if it had been, I should not have told you of it, I assure you.'
'Well, I can only hope that I shall never see Major Elliott; and if he ever proposes to come, aunt, pray do me the favour to assure him, from me, that it will not be of the smallest use.'
'That would be foolish till you've seen him. You may like him.'
'Never; I could not like a man whom I met under such circumstances, if he were an angel.'
Thus, with a heart steeled against Major Elliott and his attractions, whatever they might be, Frances Seymour made her début; and, however brilliant had been her anticipations of success, she had the satisfaction of finding them fully realised. She was the belle of the season—admired, courted, and envied; and by the end of it, she had refused at least half-a-dozen proposals. As she was perfectly independent, she resolved to enjoy a longer lease of her liberty, before she put it in the power of any man to control her inclinations.
Shortly after the termination of the season, some family affairs called Mr and Mrs Wentworth to St Petersburg; and as it was not convenient that Frances should accompany them, they arranged that she should spend the interval in visiting some families of their own connection residing in the country, who promised to take due charge of her.
The first of these, by name Dunbar, were worthy people enough, but, unfortunately for Frances, desperately dull; and the few neighbours they had happened to be as dull as themselves. There were neither balls nor routs to keep up the spirits of the London belle; and a tiresome drive of six or eight miles to an equally tiresome dinner-party, was but a poor substitute for the gaieties which the late season had given her a taste for.
Frances was not without resources. She was a fine musician, and played and sang admirably; but she liked to be told that she did so. At Dunbar House, nobody cared for music, nobody listened to her, and her most recherchées toilettes delighted nobody but her maid. She was aux abois, as the French say, and had made some progress in the concoction of a scheme to get away, when an improvement took place in her position, from the arrival of young Vincent Dunbar, the only son of the family. He was a lieutenant in a regiment of infantry that had lately returned from the colonies, and had come, as in duty bound, to waste ten days or a fortnight of his three months' leave in the dull home of his ancestors. As he was an extremely handsome, fashionable-looking youth, Frances, when she went down to dinner, felt quite revived by the sight of him. Here was something to dress for, and something to sing to; and although the young lieutenant's conversation was not a whit above the usual standard of his class, it appeared lively and witty when compared with that of his parents. His small colonial experiences were more interesting than Mrs Dunbar's domestic ones; and his account of a tiger hunt more exciting than his father's history of the run he had had after a fox. Frances was an equally welcome resource to him. Here was an opportunity, quite unexpected, of displaying his most fashionable ties and most splendid waistcoats; here was a listener for his best stories, and one who did not repay him in kind, as his father did; and here were a pair of bright eyes, that always looked brighter at his approach; and a pair of pretty lips, that pouted when he talked of going away to fulfil an engagement he had made to meet some friends at Brighton.
As was to be expected, under circumstances so propitious, the young man fell in love—as much in love as he could be with anybody but himself; whilst his parents did not neglect to hint, that he could not do better than prosecute a suit which the young lady's evident partiality justified. Pleased with the prospect of their son's making so good a match, they even ventured one day a dull jest on the subject in the presence of Frances—a jest which, heavy as it was, aroused her to reflection. Flirting with a man, and angling for his admiration, is one thing; loving and marrying him, is another. For the first, Vincent Dunbar answered exceedingly well; but for the second, he was wholly unfit. In spite of her little weaknesses, Frances had too much sense not to see that the young lieutenant was an empty-headed coxcomb, and not at all the man with whom she hoped to spend her years of discretion—when she arrived at them—after an ample enjoyment of the delights that youth, beauty, and wealth are calculated to procure their possessor. Her eyes were opened, in short; and the ordinary effect of this sort of awakening from an unworthy penchant—for attachment it could not be called—ensued: the temporary liking changed into aversion, and the attentions that had flattered her before became hateful. In accordance with this new state of her feelings, she resolved to alter her behaviour, in order to dissipate as quickly as possible the erroneous impression of the family; whilst, at the same time, she privately made arrangements for cutting short her visit, and anticipating the period of her removal to the house of Mrs Gaskoin, betwixt whom and the Dunbars the interval of her friends' absence in Russia was to be divided. In spite of her stratagem, however, she did not escape what she apprehended. Vincent's leave had nearly expired too; and when the moment approached that was to separate them, he seized an opportunity of making his proposals.