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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1834 Excerpt:...with a fortune of twenty thousand a-year! She seemed to have declined the hand of Mr. Frederick Lorimer--the paltry contemptible younger brother--only that he might eventually be enabled to lay his coronet and his opulence at the feet of her sister Minnie!" A thousand circumstances conspired to augment her regrets and self-accusation. Immediately opposite to her at table, sat Miss De Vesci, unusually excited by the events and agitation of the morning, and consequently animated into a double portion of youthful beauty; appearing to engross the exclusive attention of her cousin, Mr. Willingham, whom Claudia and herself had always allowed themselves to treat with marked neglect; and whom they now discovered to have acquired, during their absence from England, a very considerable influence in society, independently of his brilliant worldly prospects. He was looked up to as one of the most rising men of the day, even in that very select circle of the aristocracy, which formed the utmost limit of their own desires and interest. Either of them would have in the only son of Sir Joseph Willingham "a match" equal to the most sanguine hopes of their ambition; but till very lately they had continued to regard him as the sandy-haired offset of the Bodham mesalliance, and obscure beyond the redemption of fortune or of title. It was now too late!--Eleanor felt that it was too late! In her cousin Charles she had forfeited a second chance of an auspicious matrimonial connexion! Another unpleasing object attracted her attention in the course of the repast. Sufficiently near to her sister Claudia to afford a very trying daylight contrast to her somewhat faded complexion and sharpened features, she detected two strikingly lovely girls, in the first bloom of yout...