The apartments were small, shabbily furnished,
inconvenient, and expensive; but the situation was irreproachable, and
the haughty Lydia could only exist in an irreproachable situation.
Captain Graham finished his cigar, and went out to his club, leaving
his sister alone, discontented, gloomy, sullen, to get through the day
as best she might.
The time had been when the prospect of a visit to Hallgrove Rectory
would have seemed very pleasant to her. But that time was gone. The
haughty spirit was soured by disappointment, the selfish nature
embittered by defeat.
There was a glass over the mantel-piece. Lydia leaned her arms upon the
marble slab, and contemplated the dark face in the mirror.
It was a handsome face: but a cloud of sullen pride obscured its
beauty.
"I shall never prosper," she said, as she looked at herself. "There is
some mysterious ban upon me, and on my beauty. All my life I have been
passed by for the sake of women in every attribute my inferiors. If I
was unloved in the freshness of my youth and beauty, how can I expect
to be loved now, when youth is past and beauty is on the wane? And yet
my brother expects me to go through the old stage-play, in the futile
hope of winning a rich husband!"
She shrugged her shoulders with a contemptuous gesture, and turned away
from the glass. But, although she affected to despise her brother's
schemes, she was not slow to lend herself to them.
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