Miss Gladwin's Chance by Antonio Hope — Read

Of course the one thing I had to avoid was any show of sympathy; she would have resented bitterly such an impertinence. If I knew her at all -- and I had been an interested observer of her growth from childhood to woman's estate -- the sympathy of the county, unheard but infallibly divined, was a sore aggravation of her fate. As I read extracts from the documents and explained their effect, freeing them from technicalities, as Sir Thomas had thoughtfully charged me, my impassivity equalled hers.

I might have been telling her the price of bloaters at Great Yarmouth that morning, and she considering the purchase of half-a-dozen. In fact, we overdid it between us; we were both grotesquely uninterested in the documents; our artificial calm made a poor contrast to the primitive and disguise-scorning exultation of the pair who had gone riding over the turf in the sunshine. I could not help it; I had to take my cue from her. My old father had loved her; perhaps he would have patted her hand, perhaps he would even have kissed her cheek: what would have happened to her composure then? On the other hand, he would have been much more on Sir Thomas's side than I was. He used often to quote to me a saying of his uncle's, the venerable founder of the fine business we enjoyed: "Every other generation, the heir ought to lay an egg and then die." The long minority which he contemplated as resulting from a family bereavement _prima facie_ so sad would reëstablish the family finances.