Was there cause
of grief in this? Did she really regret that Miss Grantly, with all
her virtues, should be made over to the house of Hartletop? Lady
Lufton was a woman who did not bear disappointment lightly; but
nevertheless she did almost feel herself to have been relieved from
a burden when she thought of the termination of the Lufton-Grantly
marriage treaty. What if she had been successful, and, after all, the
prize had been other than she had expected? She was sometimes prone
to think that that prize was not exactly all that she had once hoped.
Griselda looked the very thing that Lady Lufton wanted for a queen;
but how would a queen reign who trusted only to her looks? In that
respect it was perhaps well for her that destiny had interposed.
Griselda, she was driven to admit, was better suited to Lord Dumbello
than to her son. But still--such a queen as Lucy! Could it ever come
to pass that the lieges of the kingdom would bow the knee in proper
respect before so puny a sovereign? And then there was that feeling
which, in still higher quarters, prevents the marriage of princes
with the most noble of their people. Is it not a recognized rule
of these realms that none of the blood royal shall raise to royal
honours those of the subjects who are by birth un-royal? Lucy was
a subject of the house of Lufton in that she was the sister of the
parson and a resident denizen of the parsonage.
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