Elisabeth Kidd Read Online Free Page A

Blackpool’s magazine was returned with a polite recommendation that the author essay some other form of literary expression.
    When asked his opinion of this latest plan, Augustus raised his eyes to heaven for guidance, murmured that Sydney would have to practice her scales a little more, and retreated to his study when she took his advice and settled herself at the parlour instrument for what looked to be a long siege— allegro but determinedly fortissimo. Closeted with an unfinished sermon, Mr. Wendt sought inspiration in the Bible, and inadvertently picked up his wife’s copy instead of his own. It was in Proverbs that he discovered The Letter.
    Sydney always thought of it that way later—in large letters, as if it were Magna Carta or The Articles of War. The Letter was from her father Owen to his sister Emma, saying that if Sydney ever wanted for anything, Emma was to apply to the Marquess of Lyle, Major Archer’s former commanding officer and best friend. Her aunt had never informed anyone of The Letter’s existence, apparently because she never considered that there was any material thing lacking in Sydney’s life; but her uncle, who in spite of his supposedly lofty views of worldly goods thought differently, viewed The Letter as nothing short of divine intervention.
    “You cannot stay on here forever,” he told Sydney firmly when he showed it to her, and Sydney reacted predictably—bursting into tears and kneeling pleadingly at her uncle’s feet.
    “Why, what would people think?” he went on, trying not to look at the tear-filled blue eyes raised to his. “How could I ever explain such selfishness on my part to my parishioners?’’
    “Then I shall go to live with Nicky or James. They will not turn me away!’’
    “But consider, child, how much worse that would be for you. You would live among them as a poor relation, treated kindly, of course, but as neither family nor servant, and dependent for everything on your cousins. They could certainly not afford to indulge you with piano lessons and books. The Marquess, on the other hand, would provide any entertainment you could wish, and you would meet people from the best society. If you were to make a marriage within that society—why, then you would have lost none of the things you value, and would gain the ease in life necessary to enjoy them.’’
    Her uncle’s argument was a powerful one, and Sydney at last conceded defeat. She would not sign an unconditional surrender, however, agreeing only to an uneasy truce. She did not for a moment agree with her uncle that a good marriage would afford her the independence to follow her own inclinations and pursuits, and her disdain of the Beau Monde was as exalted as only complete ignorance of the subject could make it.
    The marriage of Sydney’s aunt and uncle had seemed to her an exceptionally fine one, but she could not remember that Aunt Emma had ever had a moment to herself—she had certainly had none to waste on fashionable frivolities. Uncle Augustus meant, of course, that Sydney should make a “good” marriage in the material sense, but to Sydney that meant she would not have the one important advantage Aunt Emma had enjoyed—of being surrounded by love, as well as responsibilities. In the end, Sydney acceded to her uncle’s wishes only because she thought she saw a way to turn this catastrophe to her advantage after all.
    She did not go so far as to tell Mr. Wendt what this might be—having learned discretion by now—but in fact she had got the idea from something her uncle had said in furtherance of his argument for her going to Lyle.
    “Consider how much you will learn from living in a noble household,” said her uncle, whose belief in the value of a broad education for both sexes was unshaken even in the face of the misinterpretation his niece chose to put on it. “There is so much of which I am ignorant, but with which persons of the Marquess’s class are familiar from an early age,