Page:Ethel Churchill 2.pdf/113

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ETHEL CHURCHILL.
111

of "talented people." As it was, she knew some of the Latin names for plants in the herbal. She piqued herself on giving advice, and said very severe things; she also wrote very long letters, and was a warm partisan of the exiled Stuarts. Kind-hearted and well-meaning, she was narrow-minded and rigid, only because she thought it beneath the dignity of a sensible woman to change her mind. Ethel knew that, having once announced her marriage, it would be impossible to alter her grandmother's determination; and it was an awful thing to venture on open opposition to one, whose will had been hitherto blindly obeyed. But Ethel was young and romantic: she resolved to throw herself on the generosity of the coming lover; and felt entirely assured that he must think the heart valueless, that had been, that was but too much still, the property of another. This resolve once taken, she prepared to wait patiently the proper time for carrying it into execution; and was again sad and languid as before.

Mr. Trevanion arrived: he was a tall,