Cressida by Clare Darcy

Author:Clare Darcy [Darcy, Clare]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2014-08-01T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 10

“I know you will be relieved to hear, my dear,” Lady Letitia confided to Cressida over the breakfast table the next morning, “that Captain Rossiter has left the house.

I met Arthur as I was coming down the stairs, and he said that he—that is, Captain Rossiter—had had his curricle brought round very early this morning and has gone back to London. Why I do not know, but I cannot but think it is for the best. Perhaps, away from his influence, poor Arthur may be made to see the light. ”

Cressida, who had passed a most disagreeably wakeful night, in which she had alternated between wishing fervently that she might never set eyes upon Rossiter again and impatience for the morning to come, so that she might say all the brilliantly crushing things to him that she had unfortunately not thought of during their conversation in the garden, found herself for some reason experiencing a very strange sensation, almost one of disappointment, she might have thought, if that were not so palpably absurd, upon hearing this piece of news.

Of course she was glad that he was gone! she told herself. And to prove it, she poured herself a cup of chocolate, took a piece of buttered toast, and began to eat her breakfast as if she were feeling quite as cheerful as the birds singing outside the window in the bright May morning.

“Well, I daresay it is a very good thing that he has gone, she said to Lady Letitia, in what she hoped was an exceedingly calm voice, “but I don’t believe we can place the least reliance upon its making any difference about Uncle Arthur’s selling Calverton Place. Uncle feels he is quite powerless to do anything at all now, since the papers have already been signed, and I am bound to say that there is nothing to be hoped for from Captain Rossiter. He is quite determined to hold Uncle Arthur to his bargain. ”

The look of distressed disapproval deepened upon Lady Letitia’s face.

“So disagreeable!’’ she sighed. “I had hoped, I admit, that perhaps your influence, my dear—After all, Captain Rossiter was very fond of you once. But I daresay gentlemen forget these things more easily than we weak females do.

Cressida, who was aware of the family tradition that Lady Letitia still cherished the memory of a certain Augustus Horsham, who had figured in the single romantic interlude of her otherwise tranquil existence and had behaved very badly towards her over a wealthy jeweller’s daughter with a dowry of fifty thousand pounds, said rather shortly that in Rossiter’s case there had been very little to forget.

“Oh, but there was, my dear!’’ Lady Letitia said earnestly, opening her faded blue eyes very wide. “I am never mistaken in such matters, I assure you. Of course, your great-aunt Estella did not think so; indeed, she made some very cutting remarks to me at the time, I remember, and said I was a great ninnyhammer and you were well rid of the man, and that it was a mere passing fancy on his part.

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