Explore "Olivia" by Charles Garvice on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The news of the engagement spread like wildfire, and caused almost as much excitement in the county as a general conflagration would have done. The consternation and disappointment among the eligible men, who had each one cherished a secret hope that the prize might be his, was fearful.
"Confound these city beggars! " said one young baronet, who had laid constant siege to Olivia's heart for three hunting seasons. "They carry everything off nowadays. Seems to me that a man's thought nothing of -- by the women, at any rate -- unless he has made a pile of money out of cotton or stocks and shares. Here's the fellow without a grandfather, or an ounce of blood in his veins, carries off the loveliest and sweetest girl we've got. Hang me if I don't go and get a stool in a confounded counting-house, and make a pile myself. I don't know what's come to things nowadays; it's all money, money, money."