PETERSON’S MAGAZINE.
RUINOUS
PRICES .
BY ANNIE ARNOLD .
GEORGIANA PRESCOTT Sat before the mirror in her dressing-room , idly twisting her soft fair curls round her fingers and admiring her own pretty face, thinking, if the truth must be told, that her eyes were the brightest blue, her complexion the purest, her features the most delicate that she had ever seen ; and wondering whether there were not more truth than flattery in all the pretty speeches poured into her ears, night after night, at the balls and assemblies which she graced . It was a tempting subject for a reverie, and the important question of pink or blue for the next ball followed it in her train of thought, and she forgot how time was flying as she still toyed with the clustering ringlets.
"Georgy! Georgy !" The cry came in a clear, ringing tone from the foot of the stairs, and then flying feet came up along the entry, and to the door ; and a young lady with a slight , graceful figure, and a gipsy-like style of prettiness came in, her dark complexion tinted with bright crimson cheeks, and her large black eyes radiant with some piece of intelligence.
"Why, Georgy ! " she said, impatiently, " why were you not at grandfather's?"
Georgiana looked up with an air of bewilderment.
"Have you forgotten that it is the seventeenth of March, and just ten years since uncle John died?"
"Oh, Nell! Father never said a word about it."
"He forgot it himself! We all went, and there was no one else there, until grandpa sent for uncle Will and Arthur ; but it is so far up here that he did not send for you, and, as soon as it was all over, flew down to tell you the news. You know the directions were to open the will ten years from the date of his death at grandpa's, if he was still alive : if not, at father's."
VOL. XLI.- 18
"But, Nell, what was the will?"
"You and Arthur and I are left twenty thousand dollars each, grandpa fifty thousand, and the rest, nearly half a million, they say, is all left to Harry. The will states that uncle John's reasons for wishing the matter left so long were that he thought it would make a milksop of Harry if he grew up with great expectations, and he wished him to be a man with his principles well grounded, a profession learned , and a start taken in life before he knew that he could be independent of work, so he appointed a time when he would be twenty-five years of age to read the will. Georgy, " said Ellen, in a lower tone, " aunt Mabel wasn't mentioned at all."
" Oh, Nell ! do you know that story ? I can't get anything out of mother but hints ; and the only time I asked father, he looked so grave and sad that I never repeated the question."
"Yes, I know it ; but the folks don't like to talk about it. Come sit down here near the fire, and I'll tell you what I know of it."
Georgiana drew up an arm- chair for her cousin and another for herself, and prepared for a long story.
"She was the only girl, " said Ellen, curling herself all up in her chair, " and the youngest of grandpa's children ; and, after her mother died , they say there was no limit to the indulgence that grandpa and all the brothers granted her. She was very beautiful, and the idol of them all. Even after your father, uncle George, and my father married , they petted and spoiled her just the same as before. When they were all married but uncle John, uncle George died, and aunt Lola only lived a few months after him, so uncle John adopted Harry, the only child, as you know, and took him home. He was then two years old, and aunt Mabel became very fond of him . She was a school- girl, but she was a perfect little mother to him. He
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