The Three Brides. Yonge Charlotte Mary

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      She laughed ironically.

      “The corporation have been told that they have an opportunity,” said Raymond; “but it takes long to prepare people’s minds to believe in the expedience of such measures.  If Whitlock could be elected mayor there would be some chance, but I am afraid they are sure to take Truelove; and as things are at Wilsborough, we must move all at once or not at all.  Individual attempts would do more harm than good.”

      “Ah! you fear for your seat!” said the plain-spoken lady.

      Raymond only chose to answer by a laugh, and would not pursue the subject so treated.  He was politeness itself to all; but he withstood Lady Tyrrell’s earnest entreaties to come in and see some Florentine photographs, growing stiffer and graver each moment, while his wife waxed more wrathful at the treatment which she knew was wounding her friend, and began almost to glory in having incurred his displeasure herself.  Indeed, this feeling caused the exchange of another kiss between the ladies before Sir Harry handed Cecil into the carriage, and Raymond took the yellow paper books that were held out to her.

      Looking at the title as they drove off, he said quietly, “I did not mean to deprive you, Cecil; I had ordered Lanfrey from Bennet for you.”

      She was somewhat abashed, but was excited enough to answer, “Thank you.  I am going to join Lady Tyrrell and Mrs. Duncombe in a subscription to Rolandi’s.”

      He started, and after a pause of a few moments said gently, “Are you sure that Mr. and Mrs. Charnock would like to trust your choice of foreign books to Mrs. Duncombe?”

      Taking no notice of the point of this question, she replied, “If it is an object to exchange books at home faster than I can read them properly, I must look for a supply elsewhere.”

      “You had better subscribe alone,” he replied, still without manifest provocation.

      “That would be uncivil now.”

      “I take that upon myself.”

      Wherewith there came a silence; while Cecil swelled as she thought of the prejudice against her friend, and Raymond revolved all he had ever heard about creatures he knew so little as women, to enable him to guess how to deal with this one.  How reprove so as not to make it worse?  Ought not his silent displeasure to suffice?  And in such musings the carriage reached home.

      It had been an untoward day.  He had been striving hard against the stream at Willansborough.  The drainage was not only scouted as an absurd, unreasonable, and expensive fancy, but the architect whom he had recommended, in the hope that he would insist on ground-work which might bring on the improvement, had been rejected in favour of a kinsman of Mr. Briggs, the out-going mayor, a youth of the lower walk of the profession—not the scholar and gentleman he had desired, for the tradesman intellect fancied such a person would be expensive and unmanageable.

      Twin plans for church and town-hall had been produced, which to Raymond’s taste savoured of the gimcrack style, but which infinitely delighted all the corporation; and where he was the only cultivated gentleman, except the timid Vicar, his reasonings were all in vain.  The plan was accepted for the town-hall, and the specifications were ordered to be made out for competition, and a rate decided on.  The church was to wait for subscription and bazaar; the drains, for reason in Wil’sbro’, or for the hope of the mayoralty of Mr. Whitlock, a very intelligent and superior linendraper.

      CHAPTER XI

      Rosamond’s Apologue

      Pray, sir, do you laugh at me?

      Was Cecil’s allegiance to Dunstone, or was it to the heiress of Dunstone?  Tests of allegiance consist in very small matters, and it is not always easy to see the turning-point.  Now Cecil had always stood on a pinnacle at Dunstone, and she had found neither its claims nor her own recognized at Compton.  One kind of allegiance would have remained on the level, and retained the same standard, whether accepted or not.  Another would climb on any pinnacle that any one would erect for the purpose, and become alienated from whatever interfered with such eminence.

      So as nobody seemed so willing to own Cecil’s claims to county supremacy as Lady Tyrrell, her bias was all towards Sirenwood; and whereas such practices as prevailed at Dunstone evidently were viewed as obsolete and narrow by these new friends, Cecil was willing to prove herself superior to them, and was far more irritated than convinced when her husband appealed to her former habits.

      The separation of the welfare of body and soul had never occurred to the beneficence of Dunstone, and it cost Cecil a qualm to accept it; but she could not be a goody in the eyes of Sirenwood; and besides, she was reading some contemporary literature, which made it plain that any religious instruction was a most unjustifiable interference with the great law, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” and so, when she met Anne with a handful of texts neatly written out in printing letters, she administered her warning.

      Cecil and Anne had become allies to a certain extent, chiefly through their joint disapproval of Rosamond, not to say of Julius; and the order was so amazing that Anne did not at first take it in; and when she understood that all mention of religion was forbidden, she said, “I do not think I ought to yield in this.”

      “Surely,” said Cecil, “there is no connection between piety and cutting out.”

      “I don’t know,” said Anne; “but it does not seem to me to be right to go on with a work where my Master’s Name is forbidden.”

      “Religion ought never to be obtruded,” said Cecil.

      “The Word ought to flavour everything, in season or out of season,” said Anne, thoughtfully.

      “Oh! that’s impossible.  It’s your narrow view.  If you thrust preaching into everything, we can never work together.”

      “Oh, then,” said Anne, quickly, “I must give it up!”  And she turned away with a rapid step, to carry her texts back to her room.

      “Anne!” called Cecil, “I did not mean that!”

      Anne paused for a moment, looked over the baluster, and repeated firmly, “No, Cecil; it would be denying Christ to work where His Name is forbidden.”

      Perhaps there was something in the elevation and the carved rail that gave the idea of a pulpit, for Cecil felt as if she was being preached at, and turned her back, indignant and vexed at what she had by no means intended to incur—the loss of such a useful assistant as she found in Anne.

      “Such nonsense!” she said to herself, as she crossed the hall alone, there meeting with Rosamond, equipped for the village.  “Is not Anne going to-day?” she said, as she saw the pony-carriage at the door.

      “No.  It is so vexatious.  She is so determined upon preaching to the women, that I have been obliged to put a stop to it.”

      “Indeed!  I should not have thought it of poor Anne; but no one can tell what those semi-dissenters think right.”

      “When she declared she ought to do it in season or out of season, what was one to do?” said Cecil.

      “I thought that was for clergymen,” said Rosamond, hitting the right nail on the head in her ignorance, as so often happened.

      “She sees no difference,” said Cecil.  “Shall СКАЧАТЬ