THAT UNFORTUNATE MARRIAGE.

BY FRANCES ELEANOR TROLLOPE

AUTHOR OF "AUNT MARGARET'S TROUBLE," "A CHARMING FELLOW," "LIKE SHIPS UPON THE SEA," ETC.

IN THREE VOLUMES.
VOL. II.

LONDON:
RICHARD BENTLEY AND SON

Publishers in Ordinary to Her Majesty the Queen.

1888.

(All rights reserved.)

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER V.
CHAPTER VI.
CHAPTER VII.
CHAPTER VIII.
CHAPTER IX.
CHAPTER X.
CHAPTER XI.
CHAPTER XII.
CHAPTER XIII.
CHAPTER XIV.
CHAPTER XV.

THAT UNFORTUNATE MARRIAGE.

CHAPTER I.

Four months in their passage leave traces, more or less perceptible, on us all. On the first evening of May's arrival, her grandmother drew her to the window, where the rosy light of a fine summer evening shone full on her face, and scrutinized her long and lovingly. Then she kissed her grand-daughter's cheek, and tapping her lightly on the forehead, said, "This is not the big baby I parted from. You're a woman now, my lass. God bless thee!" May stoutly declared that she was not changed at all; that she had returned from all the pomps and vanities just the same May as ever. But on her side she found changes.

On her first view of it in the glow of a rosy sunset, Jessamine Cottage had been looking its best. The little parlour was fragrant with flowers, and May's tiny bedroom was a pleasant nest of white dimity, smelling of lavender and dried rose-leaves. She thought the house delightful. But a very brief acquaintance showed it to be badly built and inconvenient—one of those paltry "bandboxes" of which Mrs. Dobbs had been wont to speak with contempt. Moreover, there was an indefinable air of greater poverty than she remembered in Friar's Row; and—last and worst of all—she thought granny herself looking ill. When she hinted this privately to Uncle Jo, he scouted the idea. Ill? No, no; Sarah was never ill. There was nothing amiss with Sarah. But the suggestion made him look at his old friend with new observation, and he was forced to acknowledge to himself that she was not quite so active as formerly. But he still would not admit the idea of illness. "She'll be all right now she's got you back again, Miranda," said Mr. Weatherhead, incautiously. "It's the sperrit, you see—the sperrit has been preying on the body. There's where it is."

The idea that granny had been fretting at her absence strengthened May in her resolution not to return to London. If it were absolutely insisted upon she must, she supposed, keep the compact and pay her visit to Glengowrie. But after that she would resume her place by her grandmother's side—the place to which duty and affection equally bound her. She wrote to her father announcing this intention. And she suggested that the money spent on her expenses in London would be far better employed in paying granny handsomely for her board. "I do not think she is so well off as she used to be," wrote May in simple good faith. "And I am sure, my dear father, you will feel with me that we are bound to do anything in the world we can to help her, after all her goodness to me."

The subject which mainly occupied Mrs. Dobbs's waking thoughts after May's arrival was the unknown "gentleman of princely fortune" who might turn out to be May's fate. But, try as she would, she could find no clue to May's feeling about this individual, nor could she discover who he might be. Once she tried a joking question of a general kind about sweethearts and admirers, but May's response was as far as possible from the tone of a lovelorn maiden.

"Oh, for goodness' sake, granny, don't talk of such things. It makes me sick!" was her very unexpected exclamation. And then, with a little judicious cross-questioning, the story of Theodore Bransby's wooing came out.

"Well, well, well, child, you needn't be so fierce! Poor young man! I can't help feeling sorry for his disappointment," said Mrs. Dobbs.

"Don't waste your sorrow on him, granny; he ought to have known better."

"Well, as to that, May——" began her grandmother, with a slow smile spreading over her face.

"Now, granny dear, only listen! At any rate he might have known better when he was told, mightn't he? But he would not take 'no' for an answer; and when Uncle Frederick spoke to him the next day, he was quite rude, and declared—it makes me so hot when I think of it!—declared he had been encouraged! The idea of his daring to say such a thing! And, you know all the time I quite thought he was as good as engaged to Conny Hadlow. Everybody said so in Oldchester."

"'Everybody' is a person who makes a good many mistakes about his neighbours' affairs, May. Mrs. Simpson says that young Bransby is not coming down here this summer."

"So much the better! However, in any case, he would not honour you with one of his condescending visits now. Do you remember that evening when he called in Friar's Row? How little we thought——"

May chatted with as much apparent candour and frankness as ever. But in all her descriptions of the people whom she met in London there was not one who seemed to fit Mrs. Dormer-Smith's unknown.

"Maybe her saying no word is a sign she likes him," reflected Mrs. Dobbs; "girls will keep a secret of that kind very close. They are shy of it even in their own thoughts. If I saw him and her together, I could make a shrewd guess as to how things