For the first year of her widowhood, my mother shrank from society,
and afterwards had only spasmodic fits of doubt whether it were not
her duty to make my sister go out more. So that now and then Emily
did go to a party, or to make a visit of some days or weeks from
home, and then we knew how valuable she was. It would be hard to
say whether my mother were relieved or disappointed when Emily
refused James Eastwood, in spite of many persuasions, not only from
himself, but his family. I believe mamma thought it selfish to be
glad, and that it was a failure in duty not to have performed that
weighty matter of marrying her daughter; feeling in some way
inferior to ladies who had disposed of a whole flock under five and
twenty, whereas she had not been able to get rid of a single one!
Of Clarence's doings in China I need not speak; you have read of
them in the book for yourselves, and you know how his work
prospered, so that the results more than fulfilled his expectations,
and raised the firm to the pitch of greatness and reputation which
it has ever since preserved, and this without soiling his hands with
the miserable opium traffic. Some of the subordinates were so set
on the gains to be thus obtained, that he and Lawrence Frith had a
severe struggle with them to prevent it, and were forced conjointly
to use all their authority as principals to make it impossible.
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