Black Sheep Read Free Page A

Mary was there, and I defy anyone to brangle in the teeth of her placid good sense! She said, in her sweetly comfortable way,— you know, Selina!—what a to-do was being made over a flirtation, which would never grow to serious proportions if James would but refrain from turning it into a grand tragedy, and so putting it into Fanny’s head that she was a modern Juliet. James was a good deal struck by this, and so was I, too!” She broke off, perceiving that her sister did not share her sentiments. “You don’t agree?”
    Her mild eyes filling with sentimental tears, Selina said, in a trembling voice: “How can you be so unfeeling ? When you have said I don’t know how many times that our darling should never be sacrificed as you were! When I recall your sufferings—when I think of your—of your blighted life—”
    “Selina, have you run mad ?” interrupted Abby, regarding her in astonishment. “What sufferings?”
    “You may try to hoax me, but you won’t make me believe that you have forgotten your anguish when Papa forbade poor Mr Thornaby ever to approach you again! I shall never do so!” declared Selina.
    “Good gracious!” The anxious look in Abby’s eyes was put to rout by one of irrepressible merriment. “My dearest goose, do try to forget it! I have, I promise you! Indeed, I haven’t any very dear recollection of what he even looked like, though I do remember that I believed myself to be brokenhearted at the time. At seventeen, one does, only to discover that one has quite mistaken the matter.”
    This sad want of sensibility daunted Selina for a moment, but she made a recover, saying, with an air of boundless understanding: “You were always so brave, my dear one! But if you had forgotten Mr Thornaby why did you refuse Lord Broxboume’s offer? So very flattering, and such an excellent man, with a most superior mind, and every quality to render him acceptable!”
    “Except one! He was a dead bore!” Abby’s eyes began to dance again. “Have you been picturing me nursing a broken heart all these years? My dear, I do beg your pardon, but it is quite useless to make me the heroine of a tragic romance: I must always disappoint you.”
    “Next you will tell me that you too are determined to arrange a splendid match for poor little Fanny! I hope I know you rather too well to believe that!”
    “I hope you do. I may own that Papa chanced to be right when he sent Thornaby packing, but I still hold to it that this resolve he had—and my grandfather before him, and James after him!—to arrange only the most advantageous marriages for every one of his children was nothing short of an obsession! And you may be sure I won’t allow Fanny to be sacrificed as you and Jane were! Mary was so compliant as to fall in love with George, but only think of Jane, positively forced into marriage with that odious creature who had nothing but his wealth and his title to recommend him!”
    Selina, who had derived consolation all her life from the inculcated belief that Papa must know best, said feebly: “No, no! How can you say such things, Abby? One would think—not but what—perhaps sometimes he may have been a trifle —But I am sure he did only what he believed to be right! ”
    “But for Papa,” said Abby inexorably, “you would have married that curate—I forget his name, but I daresay you would have been very happy, with a quiverful of children, and—Oh, dearest, forgive me! I didn’t mean to make you cry!”
    Selina had indeed dissolved into tears, but she wiped them away, saying: “No, no! It was only remembering ,and even dear Mama, who entered into all my feelings, couldn’t conceal from me her apprehension that he would become bald before he was forty! It is you who should be pitied!”
    “Not a bit of it! I don’t regret Thornaby, and I was not sacrificed, as Jane was! No, and I won’t let James make a burnt offering of Fanny either: that you may depend on! But, on the other hand, my