CHAPTER XXI--THE OUTSIDE OF THE COURTSHIP
'Or framing, as a fair excuse,
The book, the pencil, or the muse;
Something to give, to sing, to say,
Some modern tale, some ancient lay.'
SCOTT.
It seems to me on looking back that I have hardly done justice to
Mrs. Fordyce, and certainly we--as Griffith's eager partisans--often
regarded her in the light of an enemy and opponent; but after this
lapse of time, I can see that she was no more than a prudent mother,
unwilling to see her fair young daughter suddenly launched into
womanhood, and involved in an attachment to a young and untried man.
The part of a drag is an invidious one; and this must have been her
part through most of her life. The Fordyces, father and son, were
of good family, gentlemen to their very backbones, and thoroughly
good, religious men; but she came of a more aristocratic strain, had
been in London society, and brought with her a high-bred air which,
implanted on the Fordyce good looks, made her daughter especially
fascinating. But that air did not recommend Mrs. Fordyce to all her
neighbours, any more than did those stronger, stricter, more
thorough-going notions of religious obligation which had led her
husband to make the very real and painful sacrifice of his sporting
tastes, and attend to the parish in a manner only too rare in those
days.
Pages:
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187