Clarice Adair - 1875 Author:Randolph Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. Ma Joe and Mrs. Orville and Hermione left Stoughton, and took up their abode once more in Park-street, at the beginning of January. Mrs. Orville ... more »was considerably puzzled by her daughter's character. Hermione had a piquant grace entirely her own, and there was none of the gaucherie or sauvagerie to be eradicated which she had anticipated; on the contrary, the girl seemed as cool and self-possessed as if her last six years had been spent in Belgravian drawing-rooms instead of in a cheap Versailles pension. But she soon became aware that Hermione had a very decided will of her own, and was by no means likely to prove so docile or so easy to manage as Lilian had been. It might be because her eldest daughter had never been absent fromher, and had grown up almost more as a companion to be consulted than as a child to be counselled and advised; but Mrs. Orville felt that the same rapport would never exist between her and Hermione that there had between her and Lilian—that they should never discuss matrimonial schemes together with the certainty of the same amicable conclusions. It would be an exaggeration to say that Mrs. Orville was afraid of her younger daughter; but she felt that in any struggle or difference of opinion, Hermione would be pretty sure to hold her own, and that the peaceful days of her unquestioned rule were well-nigh at an end. Of course, in January there was little going on when they arrived in London; and Mrs. Orville was not sorry, as she preferred completing her study of her daughter's idiosyncrasies in private. Hermione steadily opposed the fiction that she was only just seventeen. "No," she said very quietly; "I am quite aware that I am not pretty. None of the people who have admired Lilian will everthink of or look at me. Mme. Surville has alw...« less