At her own door her father met her and took her into
the parlour where the tea-things were spread, and
where her sisters were already seated. Her stepmother
soon came in and kissed her kindly. She was asked
how she had enjoyed herself, and no disagreeable questions
were put to her that night. No questions, at least,
were asked which she felt herself bound to answer.
After she was in bed Kate came to her and did say
a word. “Well, Mary, do tell me. I
won’t tell any one.” But Mary refused
to speak a word.
The Rufford Correspondence
It might be surmised from the description which Lord
Rufford had given of his own position to his sister
and his sister’s two friends, when he pictured
himself as falling over the edge of the precipice
while they hung on behind to save him, that he was
sufficiently aware of the inexpediency of the proposed
intimacy with Miss Trefoil. Any one hearing him
would have said that Miss Trefoil’s chances
in that direction were very poor,—that a
man seeing his danger so plainly and so clearly understanding
the nature of it would certainly avoid it. But
what he had said was no more than Miss Trefoil knew
that he would say,—–or, at any rate
would think. Of course she had against her not
only all his friends,—but the man himself
also and his own fixed intentions. Lord Rufford
was not a marrying man,—which was supposed
to signify that he intended to lead a life of pleasure
till the necessity of providing an heir should be
forced upon him, when he would take to himself a wife
out of his own class in life twenty years younger
than himself for whom he would not care a straw.
The odds against Miss Trefoil were of course great;—but
girls have won even against such odds as these.
She knew her own powers, and was aware that Lord Rufford
was fond of feminine beauty and feminine flutter and
feminine flattery, though he was not prepared to marry.
It was quite possible that she might be able to dig
such a pit for him that it would be easier for him
to marry her than to get out in any other way.
Of course she must trust something to his own folly
at first. Nor did she trust in vain. Before
her week was over at Mrs. Gore’s she received
from him a letter, which, with the correspondence
to which it immediately led, shall be given in this
chapter.
Letter No. I.
Rufford, Sunday.
My Dear Miss Trefoil,
We have had a sad house since you left us. Poor
Caneback got better and then worse and then better,—and
at last died yesterday afternoon. And now; there
is to be the funeral! The poor dear old boy seems
to have had nobody belonging to him and very little
in the way of possessions. I never knew anything
of him except that he was, or had been, in the Blues,
and that he was about the best man in England to hounds
on a bad horse. It now turns out that his father
made some money in India,—a sort of Commissary
