Cressida by Clare Darcy

something occurred that made her see that it was very much her affair, after all.
    It began with a note brought to her by hand from Sir Octavius, requesting her to name a time at which it might be convenient for him to call upon her on a matter of urgent business. She was at that moment about to step into her barouche to purchase the latest volume of Sir Walter Scott s poems at Hatchard’s and visit her milliner, who had signified that she had some new and ravishing creations to display to her; but, learning from the clerk who had brought the message that Sir Octavius would be free to see her if she were to go to his office at once, she altered her plans and instructed her coachman to drive to the City instead.
    She found Sir Octavius in his austerely splendid office, and quite prepared, she soon discovered, to spend an unusually long period of time in social gossip before coming down to what had been presented to her as a matter of urgent business.
    ‘What are you up to, Octavius?” she enquired presently in a rather suspicious tone. “And don’t say  Nothing because I know you too well to believe anything of the sort. You can’t possibly be interested in how many times I stood up with Langmere at the Herrings’ ball.” “Ah, but I am,” said Sir Octavius tranquilly. “It will make rather a difference, you see, in how you receive my news if you are planning to marry him.”
    He looked at her quizzically, observing that her colour remained the same.
    “Of course I am not planning on marrying him now ,’ she said. “In point of fact, he hasn’t asked me.” “Which tells me very little, you know,” remarked Sir Octavius, “as tomorrow you may give me an exactly opposite answer with an equally good conscience. That is the worst thing about women: they change their minds.” “So do men,” said Cressida, thinking unaccountably, and much to her annoyance, of a younger Rossiter who had asked her to marry him with every appearance of wishing her to do so, and then had apparently had second thoughts. “You had better tell me about it, whatever it is, she said to Sir Octavius. “And I really cannot see what difference it will make to anything whether I am to marry Langmere or not.
    Sir Octavius, looking at her with his very expressive right eyebrow raised rather higher than usual, said perhaps, but it appeared to him that the Marchioness of Langmere, with estates in Sussex, Leicestershire, and Derbyshire, to say nothing of one of the most desirable town houses in London, might be rather less interested than might Miss Cressida Calverton in the fact that Calverton Place was about to be sold out of the family.
    “Calverton Place?” Cressida stared at him. “What on earth are you talking of, Octavius? Do you mean to tell me that Uncle Arthur is thinking of selling it? But he can’t be. It is entailed.”
    “Mr. Walter Calverton, the heir, has agreed to break the entail, I believe,” Sir Octavius said. And, as Cressida still looked unconvinced, “My dear girl, it is quite the soundest thing that he could do,” he went on. “You must be aware that your uncle has already sold all the land it was possible for him to sell, and that there is very little left besides the house itself and the gardens and park—all of which are heavily mortgaged. As matters are arranged at the present time, Mr. Walter Calverton stands to inherit a mountain of debt and a house he cannot afford to live in, which is fast falling into ruin because of neglect. And as he is a very distant relation of your uncle’s—is he not?”
    Cressida nodded.
    “—and can have no sentimental attachment to the place,” Sir Octavius continued, “it would certainly appear wiser for him to arrange matters with your uncle now in such a way that he—that is, your uncle—will be able to accept the very advantageous offer he has received. ”
    “An advantageous offer? For Calverton Place? But who can