he paid some of Mrs. Challoner’s more pressing bills, and though he did it with a bad grace, and was consistently discouraged by his wife and daughters, he could always be relied upon to step into the breach before matters reached too serious a pass. He said, grumbling, that he did it for his little Sophy’s sake, for he could not bear to see such a monstrous pretty girl go dressed in the rags Mrs. Challoner assured him she was reduced to. His elder niece awoke no such generous feeling in his breast, but since she never exerted herself to captivate him, and always stated in her calm way that she lacked nothing, this was perhaps not surprising. Though he would naturally never admit it, he stood a little in awe of Mary Challoner. She favoured her father, and Henry Simpkins had never been able to feel at ease with his handsome brother-in-law. Charles Challoner had been reckless and graceless, and his own noble family had, declined having any hiter-course with him after he had committed the crowning in-descretion of marriage with Miss Clara Simpkins. He was indolent and spendthrift, and his morals shocked a decent-living merchant. But for all that he had an air, a faint hauteur of manner that set his wife’s relations at a distance, and kept them there. They might assist materially in the upkeep of his establishment, and he was not above permitting them to rescue him from the Spunging House, whenever he was unfortunate enough to fall a victim to his creditors, but a gentleman of his connections could not be expected to consort on equal terms with (as he neatly phrased it) a bundle of Cits. This easy air of assurance, and a patrician cast of countenance he bequeathed to his elder daughter. Her Uncle Henry found himself ill at ease in her presence, and wished that if his son Joshua must feel it incumbent on him to fall in love with one of his cousins, he would choose the easier and prettier Sophia.
Mrs. Challoner had only the two daughters, and since Mary’s sixteenth birthday her main object in life had been to marry them both suitably as soon as possible. The signal success once achieved by a certain Irish widow put ideas into her head which her brother thought absurd, but though she admitted that Mary, in spite of her grand education, could scarcely hope to achieve more than a respectable alliance, she could not find that either Maria or Elizabeth Gunning in their prime had outshone her own Sophia. It was more than twenty years since the Gunning sisters had taken the town by storm, and Mrs. Challoner could not remember ever to have set eyes on either, but she knew several reliable persons who had, and they all assured her that Sophia far transcended the famous beauties. If Mrs. Gunning, who hadn’t a penny, and was dreadfully Irish as well, could catch an earl and a duke in her matrimonial net, there seemed to be very little reason why Mrs. Challoner, with a respectable jointure, and no common Irish accent, should not do quite as well. Or if not quite, at least half—for she was not besotted about her daughters, and had made up her mind a long time ago that nothing great could be hoped for Mary.
It was not that the girl was ill-favoured. She had a fine pair of grey eyes, and her profile with its delightfully straight nose and short upper lip was quite lovely. But placed beside Sophia she was nothing beyond the common. What chance had chestnut curls when compared to a riot of bright gold ringlets? What chance had cool grey eyes when the most limpid blue ones peeped between preposterously long eyelashes?
She had, moreover, grave disadvantages. Those fine eyes of hers had a disconcertingly direct gaze, and very often twinkled in a manner disturbing to male egotism. She had common-sense too, and what man wanted the plainly matter-of-fact, when he could enjoy instead Sophia’s delicious folly? Worst of all she had been educated at a very select seminary—Mrs. Challoner was sometimes afraid that she was almost a Bluestocking.
The education had been provided by the girl’s paternal relatives, and at one time Mrs. Challoner had expected wonders to come of it. But Mary seemed to have acquired nothing from it but a quantity of useless knowledge, and a certain elegance of deportment The select seminary had housed young ladies of the highest rank, but Mary’s common-sense fell short of making fast-friends with any of them, so that Mrs. Challoner’s visions of entering the Polite World through her daughter’s friendships all vanished, and she was left to wish that she had never applied to the Challoners for help at all. Yet at the time of Charles Challoner’s early demise, it had seemed to her to be an excellent thing to do. Her brother had said that she could hope for nothing from such high and mighty folk, and it certainly seemed now as though she had got worse than nothing. While evincing no desire to set eyes on his late son’s spouse, General Sir Giles Challoner had expressed his willingness to provide for the education of his eldest granddaughter. Mrs. Challoner perforce had accepted this half-loaf, with the secret belief that it would lead to better things. It never had. On several occasions Mary had been bidden on a visit to Buckinghamshire, but no suggestion either of adopting her, or of inviting her mamma and sister to share the visit, had ever been made.
It was bitterly disappointing, but Mrs. Challoner was a just woman, and she had no doubt that the frustration of her ambitions was largely due to Mary herself. For all her wonderful learning, the girl had not the smallest notion of bettering her position. With every opportunity (if only she had known how to be ingratiating) of insinuating herself into the affections of her benefactors, she had apparently made no attempt to be indispensable to them, so that here she was, actually twenty years of age, still sharing the lodging of her mother and sister, and with no better prospect in view than marriage with her cousin Joshua.
Joshua, a stout and affluent young man, was not an earl, but then Mary was not Sophia, and Mrs. Challoner would have been quite satisfied with this match for her elder daughter. Inexplicably Joshua had no eyes for Sophia. He was obstinately and somewhat fiercely in love with Mary, and the mischief was that the stupid girl would have none of him.
“I don’t know what you look for, I’m sure,” Mrs. Challoner said, pardonably incensed. “If you think you will marry a titled gentlemen, let me tell you, Mary, that you have no notion how to go about the business.”
Whereupon Mary had looked up from her stitchery, and said with a humorous inflexion in her calm voice: “Well, mamma, I have plenty of opportunity for learning, haven’t I?”
“If all that fine education of yours taught you was to be odiously sarcastic about your sister, miss, you wasted your time!” said her mother sharply.
Mary bent her head over her work again. “Indeed I think so,” she said.
There was nothing much to be made of this. Mrs. Challoner suspected her daughter of a hidden, and probably unpalatable meaning, but could not resist saying: “And though you may sneer at Sophia now, I wonder how you will look when she is my lady.”
Mary re-threaded her needle. “I think I should look much surprised, mamma,” she replied somewhat drily. Then as Mrs. Challoner began to bridle, she put her work aside, and said in her quiet way: “Madam, surely in your heart you know that Lord Vidal does not dream of marriage?”
“I will tell you what it is, miss!” said her mother with a heightened colour, “you are jealous of your sister’s beauty, and all the suitors she has! Not dream of marriage? Why, what do you know of the matter, pray? Does he take you so deep into his confidence?”
“I do not think,” said Mary, “that Lord Vidal is aware of my existence.”
“I’m sure that’s no wonder,” declared Mrs. Challoner. “You’ve no notion how to make yourself agreeable to a gentleman. But that’s no reason why you should be so prodigious unpleasant about poor Sophia’s chances. If ever I saw a man fall head over ears in love, that one is Lord Vidal. Lord, he’s for ever kicking his heels upon our doorstep, and as for the posies and the trinkets he brings—”
“They had better be given back to him,” said her daughter prosaically. “I tell you that man means no good towards Sophia. Good God, mamma, don’t you know his reputation?”
Mrs. Challoner failed to meet that straight gaze. “Fie, and pray what should you, a chit from the schoolroom, know of a gentleman’s reputation?” she said virtuously. “If he has been something of a rake, that will all be changed when he weds my pretty Sophia.”
“It seems fairly safe to say so,” agreed Mary, picking up her work again. “You choose to be hoodwinked, ma’am, but if you will believe he means honestly by my sister, will you not at least consider how far apart are their fortunes?”
“As to that,” replied Mrs. Challoner, preening herself, “I am sure the Challoners are good enough for anyone. Not that it signifies in the least, for we all know how the Gunnings, who were nobody, married into the nobility.”
“They did us a great disservice thereby,” sighed Mary.
More she would not say, deeming it useless, but it was with deep misgiving that she regarded her sister when that damsel danced in, fresh from an expedition with her bosom friends, the Matchams.
Sophia was just eighteen, and it would have been hard to have found a fault in her appearance. She had the biggest of cornflower-blue eyes, the daintiest of little noses, the softest, most adorable mouth in the world. Her curls, which her mamma nightly brushed for her, were of a gold that had nothing to do with flaxen, and her complexion was of that rose-leaf order that seems too perfect to be natural. She had a frippery brain, but she could dance very prettily, and knew just how to drive a man to desperation, so that it really did not matter in the least that she was amazingly ignorant, and found the mere writing of a letter the most arduous task.
