Читать книгу A Change in the Cabinet онлайн

18 страница из 64

Some two years before, in London, one George Mulross Demaine had lain languishing for lack of money.

He was of good birth, and doubtless had he possessed a secure and flowing fortune, his natural diffidence would have been less pronounced, and the strange fatality by which he could hardly place his hands and feet in any position without causing some slight accident to the furniture, would have passed unnoticed, or would have been put down to good nature. But George Mulross was wholly devoid of means.

George Mulross Demaine, like so many of his rank, was related to Mary Smith.

Now Mary Smith, her pleasing, energetic person, her lively eyes and dear soul, the reader can never fully know unless she has perused or rather learned by heart, that entrancing work, “Mr. Clutterbuck’s Election,” in which, like a good fairy, she plumps across the scene and is perceived to be the friend, the confidant, the cousin, the sister-in-law or the aunt of at least three-quarters of what counts in England.

She will not feel, I say, unless she has made that work her bible, how from St. James’s Place Mary Smith blessed Society with her jolly little hands, and indulged in the companionship of characters as varied as the Peabody Yid and Victoria Mosel.