At R---- was their old family home, a place of very little pretension,
but to which they were much attached. When the father died, five years
before, the two sons had bought the place, or rather had taken it as
their share, turning over the more productive property to their sister.
They had been very reluctant to close the house, and it was decided that
Sophie should go there every summer, and take her servants from the
city; the expenses of the place being borne by the two young men. They
were very well able to do it, as both were successful in business, and
keeping open the old home, with no diminution of the hospitality of
their father's time, was perhaps the greatest pleasure that they had.
It was an arrangement which suited Sophie admirably. It gave her the
opportunity to entertain pleasantly and informally; it was a capital
summer-home for her two boys; it was in the centre of an agreeable
neighborhood; and above all, it gave her yearly-exhausted purse time to
recuperate and swell again before the winter's drain. Of course she
loved the place, too, but not with the simple affection that her two
brothers did. The young men invited their friends there without
restriction, as was to be supposed; and Sophie was a gay and agreeable
hostess. No one could have made the house pleasanter than she did; and
she left nothing undone to gratify her brothers' tastes and wishes, like
a wise and prudent woman as she was.
I did not know all this then, or my invitation might not have
overwhelmed me with such gratitude to her. I reproached myself for not
having loved her the first time I saw her.
Three months! Three happy months in the country! I could hardly believe
it possible such a thing had happened to me. I took the note to my uncle
without much fear of his opposition, for he rarely opposed anything that
I had the courage to ask him, except going in the street alone. (I
believe my mother had made a runaway match, and I think he had faith in
inherited traits; his one resolution regarding me must have been, not to
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