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Words: 40527 in 12 pages
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transgressions.
The disappointed lover had no sooner finished the task of hearing his father's lecture, than he was destined to undergo a gabblement from his mother and sisters. Mrs Darnley was a worthy good creature as ever lived; but she would talk, and that not always consequentially. She always however meant well, though she might be clumsy in the manifestation of her well-meaning.
"Well, Robert,"--thus began Mrs Darnley,--"and so your father has been talking to you about poor Penelope Primrose. What a pity it is that such a nice young woman should turn out so. I really could hardly believe my senses when I first heard of it. Dear me, what a favorite she used to be here; your father used to think so highly of her."
"I can't say that I thought so very highly of her," interrupted Miss Mary Darnley; "she was a great deal too haughty for my liking. Of course we were civil to her for Robert's sake."
Miss Mary was rude in thus interrupting her mother, but it was the general practice with the young ladies, and Mrs Darnley was so much in the habit of being interrupted, that she always expected it, and kept talking on till some one else of the party began. Now this remark of Miss Mary might be founded on truth, or it might be merely the result of an angry imagination. For there is in the human mind such a reluctance to acknowledge an error in judgment, that even when we have been really and palpably deceived in a human character, we generally find out or persuade ourselves that we "prophesied so," though we never told any body.
The eldest Miss Darnley, however, had more candour. It was her opinion that, though Miss Primrose had not behaved exactly as she ought to do, yet she had too high a sense of propriety and decorum ever to transgress as was represented by Mr Pringle.
In this annunciation of opinions it was but right and regular that the youngest should speak in her turn; and notwithstanding the apparent deference which she had seemed on the previous day to yield to the oracular language of Zephaniah Pringle the critic, she said:
"I wonder who told Mr Pringle? I dare say Miss Primrose did not, and I should not think it likely that Lord Spoonbill did."
"Oh dear," replied Mary, "I dare say it is the general talk in London, and everbody knows it by this time."
"Oh dear," retorted Martha, "I dare say you know a great deal about London."
"I know a great deal more about it than you do, Martha; I was there with papa nearly two months when we had lodgings in Wigmore street."
Martha was inclined to be pert, and Mary to be pettish, and the two sisters would very likely have enjoyed a skirmish of tongues, had they not been stopped by the good humour of their brother, who was very happy to divert their tongues and thoughts to other topics. Robert Darnley therefore made an effort to suppress unpleasant feelings, and directed the conversation to affairs of a different description; and he amused his mother and sisters with anecdotes and narratives descriptive of the country from which he had recently arrived.
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