A London Season by Anthea Bell Page B

especially those like Conington who were so eligible as to be generally pursued rather than pursuing.
    Any alarm still lingering in Lady Yoxford ’ s breast concerning her young cousin ’ s behaviour in London was thus soon stilled; since that Unfortunate Business of the tutor, she thought, Persephone had learnt conduct. Plainly she no longer thought it good fun to break hearts. Elinor fancied that the energy she might, at sixteen, have put into that occupation now went into her music instead.
    “I own myself very pleasantly surprised in Persephone,” Isabella confided to Miss Radley. “I believe she will make a very good match! To own the truth, Elinor, I ’ d as lief not have her for my daughter-in-law, because I don ’ t think she would make Charley comfortable, and besides his being still very young, he has no need to marry a fortune, although ... where was I? Oh yes — I was a little afraid she might throw out lures for Charley, but I don ’ t think he feels for her in that way, do you?”
    “Not in the least,” Elinor was very ready to agree, since it was obvious that young Mr. Hargrave and his cousin were still upon the cheerful terms of childhood. “I think they regard one another quite as brother and sister. And when Charley can be induced to attend an assembly or ball with us, I have noticed that he will make himself useful to Persephone in a kind but not an amorous way. Taking her into supper, or dancing with her when she doesn ’ t wish to show favour to some other young man, I mean. It is an admirable arrangement: sensible of her, and very good - natured of him.”
    “Yes. I don ’ t believe she feels any partiality for anyone as yet — though of course, the Wintringham connection would be most eligible, and one cannot but be gratified by Conington ’ s attentions to her. Not that there is the least necessity for Persephone to be rushing into an engagement at the beginning of her first Season. Especially now I have you to take all the troublesome part of her come-out off my hands!” added Isabella, with engagingly frank self-interest. “Still, it would be a very good marriage. You know, for the first time I begin to understand how mothers of growing daughters must feel, which is something I have never known in just that way before, on acccount of all the boys coming before Maria.”
    And resting her cheek on her hand in a pretty pose, she fell to musing, well in advance, upon those scions of the aristocracy now bowling their hoops in the Park or throwing tantrums in the nursery, who might one day make eligible husbands for her treasured only daughter.
    “I dare say,” she observed idly after a while, “that I should know more about little girls if only Catherine ’ s baby had lived, because she would be ten by now, and of course I should have seen a great deal of her .”
    “Catherine?” asked Elinor, quite at sea.
    “Edmund ’ s wife, my dear — didn ’ t you know he had been married once?”
    “No, indeed.”
    “Poor Catherine! She was quite lovely, and died in childbed of a baby girl who died too.”
    “Oh, I am so sorry,” exclaimed Elinor, with ready sympathy. “How sad for you all!”
    “Yes, for Catherine was the sweetest creature, just like a sister to me, and it ’ s my belief that Edmund has never truly recovered from her loss. He has not shown the least sign of wishing to marry again, as you might think he would, knowing that the baronetcy must come to him some day, and unless he has a son, of course, the line dies out with him. However, he does not seem to care for that, for I have never, in all this time, seen him pay serious attentions to any lady of the first respectability, although naturally he has had — well, intimate friends of the female sex!”
    “Naturally,” echoed Elinor, surprising herself in a rather shocking sense of envy of those intimate friends, if by that term the delicately spoken Isabella meant what Elinor thought she did. Really, this will