The unfortunate concomitant circumstances still remained,
and were of sufficient force, as she thought, to make such a marriage
inexpedient. Lucy was the sister of a gentleman who by his peculiar
position as parish clergyman of Framley was unfitted to be the
brother-in-law of the owner of Framley. Nobody liked clergymen better
than Lady Lufton or was more willing to live with them on terms of
affectionate intimacy, but she could not get over the feeling that
the clergyman of her own parish,--or of her son's,--was a part of
her own establishment, of her own appanage,--or of his,--and that
it could not be well that Lord Lufton should marry among his own
dependants. Lady Lufton would not have used the word, but she did
think it. And then, too, Lucy's education had been so deficient. She
had had no one about her in early life accustomed to the ways of,--of
what shall I say without making Lady Lufton appear more worldly than
she was? Lucy's wants in this respect, not to be defined in words,
had been exemplified by the very way in which she had just now stated
her case. She had shown talent, good temper, and sound judgement; but
there had been no quiet, no repose about her. The species of power
in young ladies which Lady Lufton most admired was the _vis inertiae_
belonging to beautiful and dignified reticence; of this poor Lucy had
none.
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