'What ?' Selina gasped.
'Don't fall into despair, my love!' said Abby, smiling at her. 'He may talk of removing Fanny to his – or, rather, her – own home, but I fancy he would meet with some sturdy opposition from Cornelia! If he overbore it I'm sure it would be for the first time in his life!'
'It would be the cruellest thing! She would be miserable!' uttered Selina, in palpitating accents.
'Oh, she would run away!' replied Abby cheerfully. 'I told him so, which gave him the chance to deplore her upbringing. However, before we got to actual dagger-drawing –'
'You should not! Oh, dear, oh, dear, how often has dear Mama begged you not to be so – so impetuous?'
'No, of course I should not, but there was no harm done, because Mary was there, and I defy anyone to brangle in the teeth of her placid good sense! She said, in her sweetly comfortable way, – you know, Selina! – what a to-do was being made over a flirtation, which would never grow to serious proportions if James would but refrain from turning it into a grand tragedy, and so putting it into Fanny's head that she was a modern Juliet. James was a good deal struck by this, and so was I, too!' She broke off, perceiving that her sister did not share her sentiments. 'You don't agree?'
Her mild eyes filling with sentimental tears, Selina said, in a trembling voice: 'How can you be so unfeeling? When you have said I don't know how many times that our darling should never be sacrificed as you were! When I recall your sufferings – when I think of your – of your blighted life –'
'Selina, have you run mad?' interrupted Abby, regarding her in astonishment. 'What sufferings?'
'You may try to hoax me, but you won't make me believe that you have forgotten your anguish when Papa forbade poor Mr Thornaby ever to approach you again! I shall never do so!' declared Selina.
'Good gracious!' The anxious look in Abby's eyes was put to rout by one of irrepressible merriment. 'My dearest goose, do try to forget it! I have, I promise you! Indeed, I haven't any very clear recollection of what he even looked like, though I do remember that I believed myself to be brokenhearted at the time. At seventeen, one does, only to discover that one has quite mistaken the matter.'
This sad want of sensibility daunted Selina for a moment, but she made a recover, saying, with an air of boundless understanding: 'You were always so brave, my dear one! But if you had forgotten Mr Thornaby why did you refuse Lord Broxbourne's offer? So very flattering, and such an excellent man, with a most superior mind, and every quality to render him acceptable!'
'Except one! He was a dead bore!' Abby's eyes began to dance again. 'Have you been picturing me nursing a broken heart all these years? My dear, I do beg your pardon, but it is quite useless to make me the heroine of a tragic romance: I must always disappoint you.'
'Next you will tell me that you too are determined to arrange a splendid match for poor little Fanny! I hope I know you rather too well to believe that!'
'I hope you do. I may own that Papa chanced to be right when he sent Thornaby packing, but I still hold to it that this resolve he had – and my grandfather before him, and James after him! – to arrange only the most advantageous marriages for every one of his children was nothing short of an obsession! And you may be sure I won't allow Fanny to be sacrificed as you and Jane were! Mary was so compliant as to fall in love with George, but only think of Jane, positively forced into marriage with that odious creature who had nothing but his wealth and his title to recommend him!'
Selina, who had derived consolation all her life from the inculcated belief that Papa must know best, said feebly: 'No, no! How can you say such things, Abby? One would think – not but what – perhaps sometimes he may have been a trifle – But I am sure he did only what he believed to be right!'
'But for Papa,' said Abby inexorably, 'you would have married that curate – I forget his name, but I daresay you would have been very happy, with a quiverful of children, and – Oh, dearest, forgive me! I didn't mean to make you cry!'
Selina had indeed dissolved into tears, but she wiped them away, saying: 'No, no! It was only remembering, and even dear Mama, who entered into all my feelings, couldn't conceal from me her apprehension that he would become bald before he was forty! It is you who should be pitied!'
'Not a bit of it! I don't regret Thornaby, and I was not sacrificed, as Jane was! No, and I won't let James make a burnt offering of Fanny either: that you may depend on! But, on the other hand, my dear, I won't – if I can prevent it – let her throw herself away on the first fortune-hunter who makes up to her!'
'But I am persuaded he is no such thing!' expostulated Selina. 'He is possessed of considerable estates in Berkshire, and he comes of a most distinguished family. I believe he can trace his lineage back for hundreds of years!'
'Well, I know nothing about his ancestors, but from all I have been able to discover the present family is distinguished for profligacy, and nothing else! This man's reputation is bad; and, according to James, his father was far from respectable; while as for his uncle, he, after having been expelled from Eton, seems to have gone his length in every extravagant folly until he was packed off to India, under orders never to show his face to his family again! As for the estates, George says they are grossly encumbered. And if you think all these circumstances make Stacy Calverleigh an eligible suitor –'
'Oh, no, no, no!' Selina cried distressfully. 'Only I can't believe that poor Mr Calverleigh – and it always seems to me most unjust to visit the sins of the fathers upon the children, and when it comes to an uncle positively wicked! Such engaging manners, and feels just as he ought, besides showing delicacy of mind, and – oh, I don't believe it!'
'Well, it was what George said, and you must allow that he is not at all prudish, as James is.' She paused, her brow wrinkled in thought. 'And I should suppose, wouldn't you, that a libertine must be engaging?'
'Abby!' gasped Selina. 'I must beg of you to guard your tongue! If anyone were to hear you – !'
'Well, no one but you can hear me,' Abby pointed out. 'And all I said was –'
'I know nothing about that class of person!' interrupted Selina hastily.
'No, nor do I,' said Abby, on a note of regret. 'Except what I've read, of course, and that diverting man who came to a ball the Ashendens gave – oh, years ago! Papa said he would not permit a daughter of his to stand up for as much as one dance with such a fellow as that, only I had already done so, and very agreeable it was! I don't know that he was a libertine, but I do know that he was a shocking flirt – and not because Rowland told me so! In that consequential way of his, which made him look just like Papa – you know!'
It was evident that whatever Miss Wendover might have known she was determined to forget. Summoning to her aid all the authority of her years, she said, in a voice of the gravest reproof: 'Must I remind you, Abigail, that dear Rowland is dead?'
'No, and you need not remind me that he was our eldest brother either. Or call me by that detestable name! Whatever else I might forgive Papa, that I never could! Abigail! Mashams and maidservants!'
'Some people think it a charming name!' said Selina, casting an arch look at her. 'One of them is Canon Pinfold, who thinks you are charming too! He says that it is from the Hebrew, and means father rejoiced.'
After a stunned moment, her unregenerate sister went into a peal of laughter. It was several minutes before she could do more than wail: 'Papa c-can't have kn-known that! He w-wanted another son!' and when she did manage to stop laughing Selina's look of pained reproach very nearly set her off again. She bit her lip, and said, a little shakily: 'Don't mind me! You know what I am! And what in the world has all this to do with Fanny? Selina, I realise that you have a decided tendre for Calverleigh, but if he were the biggest prize on the matrimonial mart I still should not like it! Good God, do you wish her to plunge into marriage with the first man she has met who is neither middle-aged nor a youth she has known since he was a schoolboy? At seventeen!'