BY MRS. CAROLINE H. BUTLER.
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CHAPTER I.
With the engagement of Rupert Forbes and Anna Talbot, started up a host of scruples and objections among the friends of the parties—not only manifested in the ominous shakings of very wise heads upon several very respectable shoulders, in prophetic winks and upturned eyes—but also found vent in speeches most voluble and fault-finding.
Rupert Forbes was a young physician in moderate circumstances, yet in good practice, established in a pleasant country village, some two hundred miles from the metropolis. Anna Talbot, the youngest of the four unmarried daughters of a wealthy citizen; a pet, a beauty, and a belle, who had been educated by a weak, fashionable mother to consider all labor as humiliating, and to whom the idea of waiting upon one’s self had never broken through the accustomed demands upon man-servants and maid-servants, who from her cradle had stood ready at her elbow, so that there seemed to be after all some ground upon which the discontent of friends might justifiably rest.
“To think of Anna’s throwing herself away upon a country physician, after all the expense we have lavished upon her dress and education—it is absolutely ungrateful!” said Mrs. Talbot, stooping to caress a little lap-dog reposing on the soft cushion at her feet.
“To give up the opera and the theatre for the psalm-singing of a country church—horrible!” exclaimed Belinda, humming the last new air.
“So much for mama’s bringing Miss Anna out at eighteen, just to show her pretty face, instead of waiting, as was our right!” whispered Ada to Charlotte. “Had she kept her back a little longer, we might have stood some chance.”
“We!” cried Charlotte, contemptuously. “I thank you, I am in no such haste to be married—do you think I would stoop so low for a husband! For my part I am glad Anna will be punished for all her airs—she was always vain of her beauty—see how long it will last! If she has been such a simpleton as to snap up the first gudgeon her beauty baited, why, let her take the consequences!”
“To be forever inhaling the smell of pill-boxes—pah!” said Ada.