But unhappily she set her affection upon Sir Adrian Dynecourt, with his grand old castle and his princely rent-roll--a "crumb" the magnitude and worth of which she was not slow to appreciate. At first she had not deemed it possible that Florence would seriously regard a mere baronet as a suitor, when her unbounded wealth would almost entitle her to a duke. But "love," as she discovered later, to her discomfiture, will always "find the way." And one day, quite unexpectedly, it dawned upon her that there might--if circumstances favored them--grow up a feeling between Florence and Sir Adrian that might lead to mutual devotion.
Yet, strong in the belief of her own charms, Mrs. Talbot accepted the invitation given by Sir Adrian, and at the close of the season she and Florence Delmaine find themselves the first of a batch of guests come to spend a month or two at the old castle at Dynecourt.
Mrs. Talbot is still young, and, in her style, very pretty; her eyes are languishing and blue as gentian, her hair a soft nut-brown; her lips perhaps are not altogether faultless, being too fine and too closely drawn, but then her mouth is small. She looks considerably younger than she really is, and does not forget to make the most of this comfortable fact. Indeed, to a casual observer, her cousin looks scarcely her junior.
Miss Delmaine is tall, slender, posée more or less, while Mrs. Talbot is prettily rounded, petite in every point, and nervously ambitious of winning the regard of the male sex.
During the past week private theatricals have been suggested. Every one is tired of dancing and music. The season has given them more than a surfeit of both, and so they have fallen back upon theatricals.
The play on which they have decided is Goldsmith's famous production, "She Stoops to Conquer."
Miss Villiers, a pretty girl with yellow hair and charming eyes, is to be Constantia Neville; Miss Delmaine, Kate Hardcastle; Lady Gertrude Vining, though rather young for the part, has consented to play Mrs. Hardcastle, under the impression that she looks well in a cap and powdered hair. An impossible Tony Lumpkin has been discovered in a nervous young man with a hesitation in his speech and a difficulty about the letter "S"--a young man who wofully misunderstands Tony, and brings him out in a hitherto unknown character; a suitable Hastings has been found in the person of Captain Ringwood, a gallant young officer, and one of the "curled darlings" of society.