In Trust: The Story of a Lady and Her LoverOliphant, Mrs. (Margaret)
General
In Trust: The Story of a Lady and Her Lover
Oliphant, Mrs. (Margaret)
Fiction
‘Then you are doing wrong,’ she cried, with a little real indignation.
After this her tone changed in a moment: something like bitterness stole
into it. ‘It shows how much more you are thinking of Anne than of anyone
else. You are rejecting Mount because you don’t choose that she should
be the heir. You forget you have got another child.’
‘Forget I have got another child! It is the first subject of my
thoughts.’
‘Ah, yes, perhaps so far as the money is concerned. Of course if Anne
does not have it, there is nobody but Rose who could have any right to
it. But you don’t think your youngest daughter good enough to have
anything to do with Mount. I see very well how it is, though you don’t
choose to explain.’
‘If that is how you prefer to look at it,’ he said; but at this moment a
budget of papers arrived from Hunston by a special messenger, and Mrs.
Mountford withdrew perforce. She was in a very irritable condition, as
all the house knew, ready to find fault with everything. Perhaps it was
rather an advantage to her to have a grievance, and to be able to
reproach her husband with preferring in his heart the elder to the
younger, even when he was preferring the younger to the elder in this
new will. ‘There will never be any question of _my_ child’s husband
taking the name, that is very clear,’ she said to herself, with much
vehemence, nursing her wrath to keep it warm, and thus escaping from the
question of injustice to Anne. And again it occurred to her, but with
more force than before, that to announce to her husband that Rose was
going to marry Heathcote Mountford would be a delightful triumph. She
would thus be Mrs. Mountford of Mount in spite of him, and the victory
would be sweet. But even this did not seem to progress as it appeared to
do at first. Heathcote, too, seemed to be becoming interested in Anne:
as if that could advantage him! when it was clear that Anne was ready to
lose everything, and was risking everything, every day, for that other!
Altogether Mrs. Mountford’s position was not a comfortable one. To know
so much and yet to know so little was very hard to bear.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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