"Poor darling! she seems but a child herself."
"My age--five and twenty," returned Rachel. "Well I shall go and ask
about the house. Remember, mother, this influx is to bring no trouble or
care on you; Fanny Temple is my charge from henceforth. My mission has
come to seek me," she added as she quitted the room, in eager excitement
of affection, emotion, and importance, for Fanny had been more like a
sister than a cousin.
Grace and Rachel Curtis were the daughters of the squire of the
Homestead; Fanny, of his brother, an officer in the army. Left at home
for education, the little girl had spent her life, from her seventh to
her sixteenth year, as absolutely one with her cousins, until she was
summoned to meet her father at the Cape, under the escort of his old
friend, General Sir Stephen Temple. She found Colonel Curtis sinking
under fatal disease, and while his relations were preparing to receive,
almost to maintain, his widow and daughter, they were electrified by the
tidings that the gentle little Fanny, at sixteen, had become the wife of
Sir Stephen Temple, at sixty.
From that time little had been known about her; her mother had continued
with her, but the two Mrs. Curtises had never been congenial or
intimate; and Fanny was never a full nor willing correspondent, feeling
perhaps the difficulty of writing under changed circumstances. Her
husband had been in various commands in the colonies, without returning
to England; and all that was known of her was a general impression that
she had much ill-health and numerous children, and was tended like an
infant by her bustling mother and doting husband. More than half a year
back, tidings had come of the almost sudden death of her mother; and
about three months subsequently, one of the officers of Sir Stephen's
staff had written to announce that the good old general had been killed
by a fall from his horse, while on a round of inspection at a distance
from home. The widow was then completely prostrated by the shock, but
promised to write as soon as she was able, and this was the fulfilment
of that promise, bringing the assurance that Fanny was coming back with
her little ones to the home of her childhood.
Of that home, Grace and Rachel were the joint-heiresses, though it was
owned by the mother for her life. It was an estate of farm and moorland,
worth some three or four thousand a year, and the house was perched on
a beautiful promontory, running out into the sea, and inclosing one side
of a bay, where a small fishing-village had recently expanded into a
quiet watering-place, esteemed by some for its remoteness from railways,
and for the calm and simplicity that were yearly diminished by its
increasing popularity. It was the family fashion to look down from
their crag at the new esplanade with pity and contempt for the ruined
loneliness of the pebbly beach; and as Mrs. Curtis had not health to go
often into society, she had been the more careful where she trusted her
daughters. They belonged to the county by birth and tradition, and were
not to be mixed up with the fleeting residents of the watering-place, on
whom they never called, unless by special recommendation from a mutual
friend; and the few permanent inhabitants chanced to be such, that a
visit to them was in some degree a condescension. Perhaps there was more
of timidity and caution than of pride in the mother's exclusiveness, and
Grace had always acquiesced in it as the natural and established state
of affairs, without any sense of superiority, but rather of being
protected. She had a few alarms as to the results of Rachel's new
immunities of age, and though never questioning the wisdom of her clever
sister's conclusions, dreaded the effect on the mother, whom she
had been forbidden to call mamma. "At their age it was affecting an
interesting childishness."