Jilted! Or, My Uncle's Scheme, Volume 3

by William Clark Russell

I was happy. I loved this cousin of mine dearly. It is true that I had had to undergo no ordeal for her. I had neither (to use a favourite order of description) been tried by the fire, nor proved in the furnace; “long years” had had nothing whatever to do with my love. I had been guilty of no “passionate yearnings,” nor “wild and wistful longings.” And I don’t think I had been “thrilled” once. In short, my passion was totally unlike those which are heard of at Mr. Mudie’s. And yet I am bold to say that no hero was ever fonder of the heroine whom he wooes in chapter the first, and loses in chapter the second, recovers in chapter the third, doubts in chapter the fourth, quarrels with in chapter the fifth, grows sardonic over in chapter the sixth, adores in chapter the seventh, flees in chapter the eighth, and finally marries in chapter the sixty-fourth, than I was of Theresa whom I had known only a few weeks, and whom, when I had first met her, I had execrated.

Uncle Dick arrived at Grove End next day in high spirits. I remember that after making me all manner of handsome compliments, he whispered, “Nobody shall be miserable when my daughter is happy;” and unknown to any of us left the house and after an hour’s absence returned—with Curling and Conny.

“Here they are!” he cried, in great glee, joining us on the lawn. “I was just in time. Conny had fetched her beloved at the bank and was on the point of starting for a walk. They were very reluctant to come: but I told them we couldn’t be happy without them.”

Conny turned a little pale when she met me, but soon recovered her composure and whispered her congratulations with her deep blue eyes fully upturned to mine. I gazed calmly into their depths.

“May you be very happy!” said she, and kissed me.

Eheu! when I wanted her kisses she wouldn’t give them.

Thanks to uncle Dick, our dinner-party that day was a very much livelier one than the last at which the young couple had been present. Without embarrassing Curling, he contrived to make a very great deal of him, engaged him in a conversation on topics on which the young man was well qualified to talk, and developed so many really good social points in him, that not only was I never more favourably impressed, but I actually caught my aunt regarding her son-in-law with a face absolutely promising with a propitiatory expression.

Her Theodore’s success delighted poor little Conny, who, long before the dinner was over, was chatting; and laughing as playfully as ever she had done in the days when she was the darling of the house, and life lay round her like a landscape of flowers and sunshine. She sat next to her mother, and I assure you that I would rather have forfeited the pleasure of having Theresa by my side at the table than missed the satisfaction of seeing Conny slip her hand into her mother’s, and leave it there to be nursed and petted.

That evening my uncles and myself had a long conversation on a great variety of topics, all which were of prodigious interest to me, since they all concerned me very closely. Besides a handsome settlement on his daughter, Dick promised to make us a present of a large sum of money, which was to procure me a partnership in uncle Tom’s, bank. But though that sum was considerable, the income uncle Tom promised me, not the most rapacious money-lender could have made it yield.

“Taking the capital Dick gives you at five per cent.,” said he, “your income would be £0,000; the difference, then, between that income and the sum you will draw, you will consider my present.”