Clothing Accessories on taobao, that a rumor of Sir John Oxons marriage was afloat.

 Clothing Accessories on taobao, that a rumor of Sir John Oxons marriage was afloat. Mistress Clorinda laughed, sitting straight in her saddle, her fine eyes unblenching though the sun struck them.
We had fortunes to match, she said. "I was a beggar and he was a spendthrift. Here comes Lord Dunstanwolde."
And as the gentleman rode near, it seemed to his dazzled eyes that the sun so shone down upon her because she was a goddess and drew it from the heavens.
In the west wing of the Hall twas talked of between Mistress Wimpole and her charges, that a rumor of Sir John Oxons marriage was afloat.
Yet can I not believe it, said Mistress Margery; "for if ever a gentleman was deep in love, though he bitterly strove to hide it, twas Sir John, and with Mistress Clorinda."
But she, faltered Anne, looking pale and even agitated--"she was always disdainful to him
and held him at arms length. I--I wished she would have treated him more kindly."
Tis not her way to treat men kindly, said Mistress Wimpole.
But whether the rumor was true or false--and there were those who bestowed no credit upon it and said it was mere town talk, and that the same thing had been bruited abroad before--it so chanced that Sir John paid no visit to his relative or to Sir Jeoffry for several months. Twas heard once that he had gone to France, and at the French Court was making as great a figure as he had made at the English one, but of this even his kinsman, Lord Eldershawe, could speak no more certainly than he could of the first matter.
The suit of my Lord of Dunstanwolde--if suit it was--during these months appeared to advance somewhat. All orders of surmises were made concerning it--that Mistress Clorinda had privately quarrelled with Sir John and sent him packing--that he had tired of his love-making, as twas well known he had done many times before, and having squandered his possessions and finding himself in open straits, must needs patch up his fortunes in a hurry with the first heiress whose estate suited him. But twas the women who said these things; the men swore no one could tire of or desert such spirit and beauty, and that if Sir John Oxon stayed away twas because he had been
commanded to do so, it never having been Mistress Clorindas intention to do more than play with him a while, she having been witty against him always for a fop, and meaning herself to accept no man as a husband who could not give her both rank and wealth.
We know her, said the old boon companions of her childhood, as they talked of her over their bottles. "She knew her price and would bargain for it when she was not eight years old, and would give us songs and kisses but when she was paid for them with sweet things and knick-knacks from the toy shops. She will marry no man who cannot make her at least a countess, and she would take him but because there was not a duke at hand. We know her and her beautys ways."
But they did not know her; none knew her save herself.
In the west wing, which grew more bare and illfurnished as things wore out and time went by, Mistress Anne waxed thinner and paler. She was so thin in two months time, that her soft, dull eyes looked twice their natural size, and seemed to stare piteously at people. One day, indeed, as she sat at work in her sisters room, Clorinda being there at the time, the Beauty, turning and beholding her face suddenly, uttered a violent exclamation.
Why look you at me so? she said. "Your
eyes stand out of your head like a new-hatched, unfeathered birds. They irk me with their strange, asking look. Why do you stare at me?"
I do not know,Digital Products on taobao, Anne faltered. "I could not tell you, sister. My eyes seem to stare so because of my thinness. I have seen them in my mirror."
Why do you grow thin? quoth Clorinda, harshly. "You are not ill."
I--I do not know, again Anne faltered. "Naught ails me. I do not know. For--forgive me!"
Clorinda laughed.
Soft little fool, she said, "why should you ask me to forgive you? I might as fairly ask you to forgive me--that I keep my shape and show no wasting."
Anne rose from her chair and hurried to her sisters side, sinking upon her knees there to kiss her hand.
Sister, she said,Clothing Accessories on taobao, "one could never dream that you could need pardon--I love you so--that all you do, it seems to me must be right--whatsoever it might be."
Clorinda drew her fair hands away and clasped them on the top of her head, proudly, as if she crowned herself thereby, her great and splendid eyes setting themselves upon her sisters face.
All that I do, she said slowly, and with the steadfast high arrogance of an empress self--" all
that I do is right--for Me. I make it so by doing it. Do you think that I am conquered by the laws that other women crouch and whine before because they dare not break them, though they long to do so? I am my own law--and the law of some others."
It was by this time the first month of the summer, and to-night there was again a birthnight ball, at which the Beauty was to dazzle all eyes; but twas of greater import than the one she had graced previously, it being to celebrate the majority of the heir to an old name and estate, who had been orphaned early and was highly connected, counting, indeed, among the members of his family the Duke of Osmonde, who was one of the richest and most envied nobles in Great Britain, his dukedom being of the oldest, his numerous estates the most splendid and beautiful, and the long history of his family full of heroic deeds. This nobleman was also a distant kinsman to the Earl of Dunstanwolde. At this ball, for the first time for months, Sir John Oxon appeared again. He did not arrive on the gay scene until an hour somewhat late.