"If you will marry me, sweetheart, when you are of the marrying age, I
would rather wait half a dozen years for you than have the best woman in
Oxfordshire that I know of at this present."
"Marry you!" cried Lord Fareham's daughter. "Why, I shall marry no one
under an earl; and I hope it will be a duke or a marquis. Marchioness is
a pretty title: it sounds better than duchess, because it is in three
syllables--mar-chion-ess," with an affected drawl. "I am going to be very
beautiful. Mrs. Hubbuck says so, and mother's own woman; and I heard that
painted old wretch, Mrs. Lewin, tell mother so. 'Eh, gud, your la'ship, the
young miss will be almost as great a beauty as your la'ship's self!' Mrs.
Lewin always begins her speeches with 'Eh, gud!' or 'What devil!' But I
hope I shall be handsomer than _mother_" concluded Papillon, in a tone
which implied a poor opinion of the maternal charms.
And now on this Christmas evening, in the thickening twilight of the
rambling old house, through long galleries, crooked passages, queer
little turns at right angles, rooms opening out of rooms, half a dozen
in succession, Squire Dan led the games, ordered about all the time by
Papillon, whom he talked of admiringly as a high-mettled filly, declaring
that she had more tricks than the running-horse he was training for
Abingdon races.
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