Victorian Short Stories | Page 6

that I assert no more than the truth in saying that she never added to it
either beauty, wit, or talent.
I began these descriptions by saying that Oxney Colne would, of all
places, be the best spot from which a tourist could visit those parts of
Devonshire, but for the fact that he could obtain there none of the
accommodation which tourists require. A brother antiquarian might,
perhaps, in those days have done so, seeing that there was, as I have
said, a spare bedroom at the parsonage. Any intimate friend of Miss Le
Smyrger's might be as fortunate, for she was also so provided at Oxney
Colne, by which name her house was known. But Miss Le Smyrger
was not given to extensive hospitality, and it was only to those who
were bound to her, either by ties of blood or of very old friendship, that
she delighted to open her doors. As her old friends were very few in
number, as those few lived at a distance, and as her nearest relations
were higher in the world than she was, and were said by herself to look
down upon her, the visits made to Oxney Colne were few and far
between.
But now, at the period of which I am writing, such a visit was about to
be made. Miss Le Smyrger had a younger sister who had inherited a
property in the parish of Oxney Colne equal to that of the lady who
lived there; but this younger sister had inherited beauty also, and she
therefore, in early life, had found sundry lovers, one of whom became

her husband. She had married a man even then well to do in the world,
but now rich and almost mighty; a Member of Parliament, a Lord of
this and that board, a man who had a house in Eaton Square, and a park
in the north of England; and in this way her course of life had been very
much divided from that of our Miss Le Smyrger. But the Lord of the
Government board had been blessed with various children, and perhaps
it was now thought expedient to look after Aunt Penelope's Devonshire
acres. Aunt Penelope was empowered to leave them to whom she
pleased; and though it was thought in Eaton Square that she must, as a
matter of course, leave them to one of the family, nevertheless a little
cousinly intercourse might make the thing more certain. I will not say
that this was the sole cause for such a visit, but in these days a visit was
to be made by Captain Broughton to his aunt. Now Captain John
Broughton was the second son of Alfonso Broughton, of Clapham Park
and Eaton Square, Member of Parliament, and Lord of the aforesaid
Government Board.
And what do you mean to do with him? Patience Woolsworthy asked
of Miss Le Smyrger when that lady walked over from the Colne to say
that her nephew John was to arrive on the following morning.
'Do with him? Why, I shall bring him over here to talk to your father.'
'He'll be too fashionable for that, and papa won't trouble his head about
him if he finds that he doesn't care for Dartmoor.'
'Then he may fall in love with you, my dear.'
'Well, yes; there's that resource at any rate, and for your sake I dare say
I should be more civil to him than papa. But he'll soon get tired of
making love to me, and what you'll do then I cannot imagine.'
That Miss Woolsworthy felt no interest in the coming of the Captain I
will not pretend to say. The advent of any stranger with whom she
would be called on to associate must be matter of interest to her in that
secluded place; and she was not so absolutely unlike other young ladies
that the arrival of an unmarried young man would be the same to her as
the advent of some patriarchal pater-familias. In taking that outlook
into life of which I have spoken she had never said to herself that she
despised those things from which other girls received the excitement,
the joys, and the disappointment of their lives. She had simply given
herself to understand that very little of such things would come in her
way, and that it behoved her to live--to live happily if such might be

possible--without experiencing the need of them. She had heard, when
there was no thought of any such visit to Oxney Colne, that John
Broughton was a handsome clever man--one who thought much of
himself and was thought much of by others--that there had been some
talk of his marrying a great heiress, which marriage, however had not
taken place through unwillingness on his part,