Miss Darby's Duenna Read Free

echoed incredulously. “A vicar’s wife?”
    “I know the living at Hawthorne is not large,” confessed the vicar, prepared for objections on financial grounds. “Still, I have some money from my maternal grandmother, and I feel myself to be capable of supporting Miss Hawthorne in a manner which, I believe, you would not despise.”
    “I don’t doubt it, but—dash it, Reverend! She’s only seventeen!”
    “She is young, it is true, but her devotion to the work of the parish indicates a spiritual maturity beyond her years.”
    Privately, Sir Harry suspected that his sister’s supposed devotion indicated nothing more spiritual than a schoolgirl tendre for the vicar, but he kept this observation to himself.
    “It ain’t just that. She’s never even been out of Leicestershire.”
    “Am I to understand, then, that your scruples have less to do with age than experience?”
    “Yes, that’s it! Lack of experience, there’s the ticket,” said Sir Harry, seizing upon the excuse conveniently provided a scant half-hour earlier by his chosen bride. Warming to this train of thought, he stroked his sidewhiskers, adding piously, “She needs to see a bit more of the world before becoming leg-shackled—er, entering the bonds of holy matrimony.”
    “I cannot fault your reasoning, nor your concern for your sister’s future happiness,” said his would-be relation, nodding his approval. “What, then, do you suggest?”
    “Georgie shall go to London to make her come-out,” pronounced Sir Harry, improvising rapidly. “If, by the end of the Season, her feelings are unchanged, the pair of you may marry with my blessing.”
    The Reverend Mr. Collier, overcome by the wisdom of this Solomonic decree, was moved to shake Sir Harry’s hand. “And, if the frivolities of town life prove too tempting for her to resist, then we shall know she was never cut out for life in the ministry.”
    “I wish you good fortune, vicar,” said Sir Harry, returning the handshake, “but if you were a betting man, I would lay you odds!”
    * * * *
    It was not to be expected that Georgina would submit without protest to this test of her devotion; nor did she.
    “But I cannot neglect my church work,” she objected, upon being informed of the treat in store. “If I go to London, who will see to the altar cloths, or the flowers, or—”
    “Cut line, Georgie,” said Sir Harry, interrupting this recitation. “The parish church has survived for nigh on three hundred years without you; surely it can bear your absence for three months. And don’t tell me you won’t enjoy going to balls and the theater, and wearing clothes that are all the crack, for I know you too well.”
    Georgina gave him a look of pitying disdain.  “At one time, perhaps, I might have been tempted by such frivolous pursuits. Fortunately, my dear James has opened my eyes to the futility of a life devoted entirely to pleasure. My feet are now set on a higher path.”
    “Save it for the reverend,” advised her brother with a snort of skepticism. “You’ll forget all about your high principles the minute some blade asks you to waltz.”
    “You may banish me to London, Harry, but you will never prevail upon me to whirl about a public room in the lascivious embrace of any gentleman, be he blade or no.”
    “No? Not even with your vicar?”
    “Oh!” cried an outraged Georgina, her cheeks suffused with an angry flush which, had she but known it, clashed most unfortunately with her coloring. “For your information, James says—”
    But Mr. Collier’s opinions were destined to remain a mystery, for the quarreling siblings’ mother chose that moment to voice her own objections to the proposed scheme.
    “My dear Harry, you cannot have thought,” she protested in a quavering voice. “I have scarcely put off my blacks!  How can I undertake the launching of a lively schoolgirl into society? I am sure my poor nerves would never bear the strain.”
    Having long acquaintance