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Yonge, Charlotte Mary, 1823-1901

"Chantry House"

'
Scotch Newspaper.
The wickedness of the nurse was confirmed in my mother's eyes when
the doom on the first-born of the Winslows was fulfilled, and the
poor little baby, Clarence, succumbed to a cold on the chest caught
while his nurse was gossiping with a guardsman.
He was buried in London. 'It was better for Selina to get those
things over as quickly as possible,' said Griff; but Clarence saw
that he suffered much more than his wife would let him show to her.
'It is so bad for him to dwell on it,' she said. 'You see. I never
let myself give way.'
And she was soon going out, nearly as usual, till their one other
infant came to open its eyes only for a few hours on this
troublesome world, and owe its baptism to Clarence's exertions. My
mother, who was in London just after, attending on the good old
Admiral's last illness, was greatly grieved and disgusted with all
she heard and saw of the young pair, and that was not much. She
felt their disregard of her uncle as heartless, or rather as
insulting, on Selina's part, and weak on Griff's; and on all sides
she heard of their reckless extravagance, which made her forebode
the worst.
All these disappointments much diminished my father's pleasure and
interest in his inheritance. He had little heart to build and
improve, when his eldest son's wife made no secret of her hatred to
the place, or to begin undertakings only to be neglected by those
who came after; and thus several favourite schemes were dropped, or
prevented by Griffith's applications for advances.


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