Vanity Fair - Page 363/573

Among other points, she had made up her mind that Glorvina should marry

our old friend Dobbin. Mrs. O'Dowd knew the Major's expectations and

appreciated his good qualities and the high character which he enjoyed

in his profession. Glorvina, a very handsome, fresh-coloured,

black-haired, blue-eyed young lady, who could ride a horse, or play a

sonata with any girl out of the County Cork, seemed to be the very

person destined to insure Dobbin's happiness--much more than that poor

good little weak-spur'ted Amelia, about whom he used to take on

so.--"Look at Glorvina enter a room," Mrs. O'Dowd would say, "and

compare her with that poor Mrs. Osborne, who couldn't say boo to a

goose. She'd be worthy of you, Major--you're a quiet man yourself, and

want some one to talk for ye. And though she does not come of such

good blood as the Malonys or Molloys, let me tell ye, she's of an

ancient family that any nobleman might be proud to marry into."

But before she had come to such a resolution and determined to

subjugate Major Dobbin by her endearments, it must be owned that

Glorvina had practised them a good deal elsewhere. She had had a

season in Dublin, and who knows how many in Cork, Killarney, and

Mallow? She had flirted with all the marriageable officers whom the

depots of her country afforded, and all the bachelor squires who seemed

eligible. She had been engaged to be married a half-score times in

Ireland, besides the clergyman at Bath who used her so ill. She had

flirted all the way to Madras with the Captain and chief mate of the

Ramchunder East Indiaman, and had a season at the Presidency with her

brother and Mrs. O'Dowd, who was staying there, while the Major of the

regiment was in command at the station. Everybody admired her there;

everybody danced with her; but no one proposed who was worth the

marrying--one or two exceedingly young subalterns sighed after her, and

a beardless civilian or two, but she rejected these as beneath her

pretensions--and other and younger virgins than Glorvina were married

before her. There are women, and handsome women too, who have this

fortune in life. They fall in love with the utmost generosity; they

ride and walk with half the Army-list, though they draw near to forty,

and yet the Misses O'Grady are the Misses O'Grady still: Glorvina

persisted that but for Lady O'Dowd's unlucky quarrel with the Judge's

lady, she would have made a good match at Madras, where old Mr.

Chutney, who was at the head of the civil service (and who afterwards

married Miss Dolby, a young lady only thirteen years of age who had

just arrived from school in Europe), was just at the point of proposing

to her.