“Oh!” breathed Fanny, looking eagerly up at her. “Do you mean that you think he won’t refuse it?”
“Oh, no!” said Abby. “I am very sure that he will! And although I have no very high opinion of his judgment I give him credit for not being such a niddicock as to accept the first offer made to him for your hand! A pretty guardian he would be if he allowed you to become riveted before your first season! Yes, I know that sets up all your bristles, my darling, and makes you ready to pull caps with me, but I beg you won’t! Your uncle may dream of a splendid alliance for you, but you know that I don’t! I only dream of a happy one.”
“I know—oh, I know!” Fanny declared. “And so you will support me! Best of my aunts, say that you will!”
“Why, yes, if you can convince me that your first love will also be your last love!”
“But I have told you!” Fanny said, sitting back on her heels, and staring at her in rising indignation. “I could never love anyone as I love Stacy! Good God, how can you—you!—talk like that to me? I know—my aunt told me!—how my grandfather repulsed the man you loved! And you’ve never loved another, and—and your life was ruined!”
“Well, I thought so at the time,” Abby admitted. A smile quivered at the corners of her mouth. “I must own, however, that whenever that first suitor of mine is recalled to my mind I can only be thankful that your grandfather did repulse him! You know, Fanny, the melancholy truth is that one’s first love very rarely bears the least resemblance to one’s last, and most enduring love! He is the man one marries, and with whom one lives happily ever after!”
“But you have not married!” muttered Fanny rebelliously.
“Very true, but not because I carried a broken heart in my bosom! I have fallen in and out of love a dozen times, I daresay. And as for your Aunt Mary—! She, you know, was always accounted the Beauty of the family, and you might have reckoned her suitors by the score! The first of them was as unlike your Uncle George as any man could be.”
“I thought that my grandfather had arranged that marriage?” interpolated Fanny.
“Oh, no!” replied Abby. “He certainly approved of it, but George was only one of three eligible suitors! He was neither the most handsome nor the most dashing of them, and he bore not the smallest resemblance to any of your aunt’s first loves, but theirs is a very happy marriage, I promise you.”
“Yes, but I am not like my aunt,” returned Fanny. “I daresay she would have been as happy with any other amiable man, because she has a happy disposition, besides being very—very conformable!” She twinkled naughtily up at Abby. “Which I am not! My aunt is like a—oh, a deliriously soft cushion, which may be pushed and pummelled into any shape you choose!—but I—I know what I want, and have a great deal of resolution into the bargain!”
“More like a bolster, in fact,” agreed Abby, with an affability she was far from feeling.
Fanny laughed. “Yes, if you like—worst of my aunts! In any event, I mean to marry Stacy Calverleigh, whatever my uncle may say or do!”
Well aware that few things were more invigorating to high-spirited adolescents than opposition, Abby replied instantly: “Oh, certainly! But your father, you know, was an excellent dragsman, and he was used to say that you should always get over heavy ground as light as possible. I am strongly of the opinion that you—and Mr Calverleigh—should refrain from declaring your intentions to your uncle until you can also present him with proof of the durability of your attachment.”
“He wouldn’t care: you must know he wouldn’t! And if you mean to say that I must wait until I come of age—oh, no, you couldn’t be so heartless! Four whole years—! When you have met Stacy, you will understand!”
“I shall be delighted to meet him, and wish it may be soon.”
“Oh, and so do I!” Fanny said eagerly. “You can’t think how much I miss him! You see, he was obliged to go to London, but he said it would only be for a few days, so he may be in Bath again by the end of the week. Or, at any rate, next week: that you may depend on!”
This was said with a radiant look, and was followed by a shyly ecstatic account of Fanny’s first meeting with Mr Calverleigh, and a description of his manifold charms. Abby listened and commented suitably, but seized the first opportunity that offered of turning Fanny’s thoughts into another channel. She directed her attention to the pile of dress-lengths she had procured in London, and bade her say if she liked them. This answered very well; and in going into raptures over a spider-gauze, wondering whether to have a celestial-blue crape trimmed with ribbon or puff-muslin, and arguing with Abby over the respective merits of Circassian or Cottage sleeves for a morning-dress, Fanny temporarily forgot Mr Calverleigh, and went off to bed presently, to dream (Abby hoped) of fashions.
It seemed, on the following morning, as though she had done so, for she visited her aunt before Abby was out of bed, eager to show her several fashion-plates from the latest issue of the Ladies’ Home Journal,and hopeful of coaxing her to sally forth before breakfast on a visit to the dressmaker on South Parade. In this she failed, Abby pointing out to her that her Aunt Selina, no early riser, would be very much hurt if excluded from the expedition. She added a reminder that in all matters of taste and fashion Selina was infallible.
Fanny pouted, but submitted, knowing the truth of this dictum. She might stigmatize many of Selina’s notions as fusty, but no one had ever cast a slur on Selina’s eye for the elegant and the becoming. In her youth she had been the least good-looking but the most modish of the Wendover girls; in her middle age, and endowed with an easy competence, she enjoyed the reputation of being the best-dressed woman in Bath. If Fanny did not, like Abby, seek her advice, she was shrewd enough to respect her judgment; so that when, presently, she showed Selina the sketch of a grossly overtrimmed walking-dress her secret longing to be seen abroad in this confection was nipped in the bud by Selina’s devastating criticism. “Oh, dear!” said Selina, wrinkling her nose in distaste. “All those frills, and tucks, and ribbons—! So—so deedy!”
So nothing more was seen of that fashion-plate, and in due course all three ladies set out in Miss Wendover’s new barouche for South Parade, where Madame Lisette’s elegant showrooms were situated.
Madame Lisette, who was born Eliza Mudford, enjoyed Royal Patronage, but although she was the particular protégée of the Princess Elizabeth, in whose service she had started her career, and rarely failed to receive orders from Bath’s noblest and most fashionable visitors, the Misses Wendover ranked high amongst her favourite clients: they were rich, they were resident, and they set off to the greatest advantage the fruits of her genius. By no means all her customers were honoured by her personal attention, but no sooner had her head saleswoman caught sight of the barouche drawing up outside the door than she sent an apprentice scurrying upstairs to Madame’s office with the news that the Misses Wendover—all the Misses Wendover!—were about to enter the shop. So, by the time the Misses Wendover had enquired kindly after Miss Snisby’s health, and their footman had delivered into the care of an underling the package containing the silks, and the gauzes, and the muslins purchased in London by Miss Abigail, Miss Mudford had arrived on the scene, suitably but exquisitely gowned in a robe of rich silk but sober hue, and combining with the ease of an expert the deference due to ladies of quality with the chartered familiarities of an old and trusted retainer. No less skill did she show in convincing the youngest Miss Wendover that the style of dress, proper for a young matron, for which that damsel yearned, would not make her look dashing, but on the contrary, positively dowdy. Such was her tact that Fanny emerged from the salon an hour later with the comfortable persuasion that so far from having been treated like a schoolroom miss her taste had been approved, and that the resultant creations would set her in the highest kick of fashion.