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| 2017/01/11 17:24:41瀏覽29｜回應0｜推薦0 | |
| However, if there’s one thing more than another that my heart is set to resist, it is letting this prophecy be fulfilled in our time. I’d rather compass sea and land to find a Mortimer! I’d rather set out, old as I am, and hunt for one with a lantern through the world! Sarah, though she is so capricious and contrary, is of the same mind. It was she who told me of this Mr. Richard Arkwright, whom I had forgotten all about. And yet, you see, after showing such decided interest, she turns upon one so! What a very odd thing it is that she did not marry! I never could make it out, for my part. Nobody could imagine, to see her now, how very pretty, nay, how beautiful she was; and such a way with her! and dressed, to be sure, like a duchess. All the young men in the county were after her before she went abroad. But dear, dear! to think what a changed life when she came home international development research centre , and lost her voice, and shut herself up in her own room. There is nothing I dislike more than curiosity, or prying, or suspiciousness; but I should like to know the rights of it—how Sarah went on abroad. To be sure my father was anxious enough that she should get married, and have a good humble-minded husband, who would take the name of Mortimer. It was only me that he would not hear of any proposal for. I don’t think he would have broken his heart if, like the Milly Mortimer in Queen Anne’s time, I had been so obliging as to die. However, here we are, just as we were in the nursery, two Miss Mortimers. Sarah, who might have had half a dozen good marriages, just the same as I am; and I protest I don’t even know that there are two people existing in the world who have the smallest collateral right to divide the property and take it away from the name; unless Richard Arkwright{15} should happen to have co-heiresses! married to husbands who will not change to Mortimer! Don’t let me think of such a horror! These are our circumstances in the meantime. It is a very sad thing for a family when there are no collateral branches. I forgot to say that how this Richard Arkwright came about, was by the strange accident of Squire George, who died in 1713, having two sons USRN ! Chapter V. DURING all this time—and indeed, after all, it was only a single day—I had forgotten all about Mr. Cresswell and his Sara. He and his family had been our family’s solicitors for a great many generations. He knew all our secrets that we knew ourselves. It is only about twenty years since he succeeded his father in the business, and married that pretty delicate young creature, the clergyman’s daughter of St. John’s. She died very early, poor thing, as was to be expected, and Sara is his only child. But, of course, he does not know any more than a baby how to manage a pretty fantastical young girl. They are a very respectable, substantial family in their way, and have been settled in their house in Chester for a very long time—though, of course, it would be absurd to call a family of solicitors an old family—and Mr. Cresswell is very well off in the world, and can give a very pretty fortune to his daughter; yet the covetous old fox has actually a fancy in his mind—I could see it when he was last here—that if Sara only played her cards well she might be heiress of the Park, and succeed Sarah and me. An attorney’s daughter! Not that I mean to put a slight upon Sara, who is our godchild, and a very sweet, pretty girl. But to fancy that old Cresswell could take up such an idea, and I not find him out! It is odd, really, how the cleverest of men deceive themselves. He will take every means to find out Richard Mortimer all the same. He’ll not fail of his duty, however things may turn out, I{16} know that ; but to think at the very bottom of his sly old heart that he should have a hankering after the Park! It is quite inconceivable what fancies will take hold of men. |
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