Chapter 12 - Page 2

or character, who would relieve her from her
humiliating dependence. She was prepared to sacrifice her natural
desire for youth, beauty, and virtue in a husband if she could
escape from her parents on no easier terms, but she was resolved
to die an old maid sooner than marry an upstart.

The difficulty in her way was pecuniary. The admiral was poor. He
had not quite six thousand a year, and though he practiced the
utmost economy in order to keep up the most expensive habits, he
could not afford to give his daughter a dowry. Now the well born
bachelors of her set, having more blue bood, but much less
wealth, than they needed, admired her, paid her compliments,
danced with her, but could not afford to marry her. Some of them
even told her so, married rich daughters of tea merchants, iron
founders, or successful stocktrokers, and then tried to make
matches between her and their lowly born brothers-in-law.

So, when Gertrude met Lady Brandon, her lot was secretly
wretched, and she was glad to accept an invitation to Brandon
Beeches in order to escape for a while from the admiral's daily
sarcasms on the marriage list in the "Times." The invitation was
the more acceptable because Sir Charles was no mushroom noble,
and, in the schooldays which Gertrude now remembered as the
happiest of her life, she had acknowledged that Jane's family and
connections were more aristocratic than those of any other
student then at Alton, herself excepted. To Agatha, whose
grandfather had amassed wealth as a proprietor of gasworks
(novelties in his time), she had never offered her intimacy.
Agatha had taken it by force, partly moral, partly physical. But
the gasworks were never forgotten, and when Lady Brandon
mentioned, as a piece of delightful news, that she had found out
their old school companion, and had asked her to join them,
Gertrude was not quite pleased. Yet, when they met, her eyes were
the only wet ones there, for she was the least happy of the
three, and, though she did not know it, her spirit was somewhat
broken. Agatha, she thought, had lost the bloom of girlhood, but
was bolder, stronger, and cleverer than before. Agatha had, in
fact, summoned all her self-possession to hide her shyness. She
detected the emotion of Gertrude, who at the last moment did not
try to conceal it. It would have been poured out freely in words,
had Gertrude's social training taught her to express her feelings
as well as it had accustomed her to dissemble them.

"Do you remember Miss Wilson?" said Jane, as the three drove from
the railway station to Brandon Beeches. "Do you remember Mrs.
Miller and her cat? Do you remember the Recording Angel? Do you
remember how I fell into the canal?"

These