"
"Very lucky," said the uncle. "He looks as if his life was not worth
a year's purchase. So you refused him? Quite right too. You are a
sensible woman, Caroline, in the midst of this severe reverse!"
CHAPTER XXX. AS WEEL OFF AS AYE WAGGING
'Lesbia hath a beaming eye,
But no one knows for whom it beameth,
Right and left its arrows fly,
But what they aim at, no one dreameth.'
By the advice, or rather by the express desire, of her trustees, Mrs.
Brownlow remained at Belforest, while they accepted an offer of
renting the London house for the season. Mr. Wakefield declared that
there was no reason that she should contract her expenditure; but she
felt as if everything she spent beyond her original income, except of
course the needful outlay on keeping up the house and gardens, were
robbery of Elvira, and she therefore did not fill up the establish-
ment of servants, nor of horses, using only for herself the little
pair of ponies which had been turned out in the park.
No one had perhaps realised the amount of worry that this arrangement
entailed. As Barbara said, if they could have gone away at once and
worked for their living like sensible people in a book, it would have
been all very well—-but this half-and-half state was dreadful.
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