Country life -- Fiction; Vicars, Parochial -- England -- Fiction
Dorothy was there three or four years. I said I would be brief. She and
the clergyman’s son fell in love with each other. The mother heard of
it, and sent for her home. She had other views for her. Of course, in
such eyes, a daughter’s FANCY was, irrespective of its object
altogether, a thing to be sneered at. But she found, to her fierce
disdain, that she had not been able to keep all her beloved obstinacy
to herself: she had transmitted a portion of it to her daughter. But in
her it was combined with noble qualities, and, ceasing to be the evil
thing it was in her mother, became an honourable firmness, rendering
her able to withstand her mother’s stormy importunities. Thus Nature
had begun to right herself—the right in the daughter turning to meet
and defy the wrong in the mother, and that in the same strength of
character which the mother had misused for evil and selfish ends. And
thus the bad breed was broken. She was and would be true to her lover.
The consequent SCENES were dreadful. The spirit but not the will of the
girl was all but broken. She felt that she could not sustain the strife
long. By some means, unknown to my informant, her lover contrived to
communicate with her. He had, through means of relations who had great
influence with Government, procured a good appointment in India,
whither he must sail within a month. The end was that she left her
mother’s house. Mr Gladwyn was waiting for her near, and conducted her
to his father’s, who had constantly refused to aid Mrs Oldcastle by
interfering in the matter. They were married next day by the clergyman
of a neighbouring parish. But almost immediately she was taken so ill,
that it was impossible for her to accompany her husband, and she was
compelled to remain behind at the rectory, hoping to join him the
following year.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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