[The Absentee by Maria Edgeworth]@TWC D-Link book
The Absentee

CHAPTER II
10/21

Assure my father, my DEAR MOTHER, that I will not be an expense to him.

I will live within the allowance he made me at Cambridge--I will give up half of it--I will do anything for his convenience--but marry for money, that I cannot do.' 'Then, Colambre, you are very disobliging,' said Lady Clonbrony, with an expression of disappointment and displeasure; 'for your father says, if you don't marry Miss Broadhurst, we can't live in Lon'on another winter.' This said--which, had she been at the moment mistress of herself, she would not have let out--Lady Clonbrony abruptly quitted the room.

Her son stood motionless, saying to himself-- 'Is this my mother ?--How altered!' The next morning he seized an opportunity of speaking to his father, whom he caught, with difficulty, just when he was going out, as usual, for the day.

Lord Colambre, with all the respect due to his father, and with that affectionate manner by which he always knew how to soften the strength of his expressions, made nearly the same declarations of his resolution, by which his mother had been so much surprised and offended.
Lord Clonbrony seemed more embarrassed, but not so much displeased.

When Lord Colambre adverted, as delicately as he could, to the selfishness of desiring from him the sacrifice of liberty for life, to say nothing of his affections, merely to enable his family to make a splendid figure in London, Lord Clonbrony exclaimed, 'That's all nonsense!--cursed nonsense! That's the way we are obliged to state the thing to your mother, my dear boy, because I might talk her deaf before she would understand or listen to anything else.


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