This eBook was produced by Dagny,
and David Widger
IF there were a woman in the world who might be formed and fitted toreconcile Kenelm Chillingly to the sweet troubles of love and thepleasant bickerings of wedded life, one might reasonably suppose thatthat woman could be found in Cecilia Travers. An only daughter andlosing her mother in childhood, she had been raised to themistress-ship of a household at an age in which most girls are stillputting their dolls to bed; and thus had early acquired that sense ofresponsibility, accompanied with the habits of self-reliance, whichseldom fails to give a certain nobility to character; though almost asoften, in the case of women, it steals away the tender gentlenesswhich constitutes the charm of their sex.
It had not done so in the instance of Cecilia Travers, because she wasso womanlike that even the exercise of power could not make hermanlike. There was in the depth of her nature such an instinct ofsweetness that wherever her mind toiled and wandered it gathered andhoarded honey.
She had one advantage over most girls in the same rank of life,—shehad not been taught to fritter away such capacities for culture asProvidence gave her in the sterile nothingnesses which are calledfeminine accomplishments. She did not paint figures out of drawing inmeagre water-colours; she had not devoted years of her life to theinflicting on polite audiences the boredom of Italian bravuras, whichthey could hear better sung by a third-rate professional singer in ametropolitan music-hall. I am afraid she had no other femaleaccomplishments than those by which the sempstress or embroideressearns her daily bread. That sort of work she loved, and she did itdeftly.
But if she had not been profitlessly plagued by masters, CeciliaTravers had been singularly favoured by her father's choice of ateacher: no great merit in him either. He had a prejudice againstprofessional governesses, and it chanced that among his own familyconnections was a certain Mrs. Campion, a lady of some literarydistinction, whose husband had held a high situation in one of ourpublic offices, and living, much to his satisfaction, up to a veryhandsome income, had died, much to the astonishment of others, withoutleaving a farthing behind him.
Fortunately, there were no children to provide for. A smallgovernment pension was allotted to the widow; and as her husband'shouse had been made by her one of the pleasantest in London, she waspopular enough to be invited by numerous friends to their countryseats; among others, by Mr. Travers. She came intending to stay afortnight. At the end of that time she had grown so attached toCecilia, and Cecilia to her, and her presence had become so pleasantand so useful to her host, that the Squire entreated her to stay andundertake the education of his daughter. Mrs. Campion, after somehesitation, gratefully consented; and thus Cecilia, from the age ofeight to her present age of nineteen, had the inestimable advantage ofliving in constant companionship with a woman of richly cultivatedmind, accustomed to hear the best criticisms on the best books, andadding to no small accomplishment in literature the refinement ofmanners and that sort of prudent judgment which result from habitualintercourse with an intellectual and gracefully world-wise circle ofsociety: so that Cecilia herself, without being at all blue orpedantic, became one of those rare young women with whom awell-educated man can converse on equal terms; from whom he gains asmuch as he can impart to her; while a man who, not caring much aboutbooks, is s