When
Lady Diana Angersthorpe shone forth in the West End world as the
acknowledged belle of the season, the star of Georgina Lorimer was
beginning to wane. She was the eldest daughter of Colonel Lorimer, a man
of good old family, and a fine soldier, who had fought shoulder to
shoulder with Gough and Lawrence, and who had contrived to make a figure
in society with very small means. Georgina's sisters had all married
well. It was a case of necessity, the Colonel told them; they must
either marry or gravitate ultimately to the workhouse. So the Miss
Lorimers made the best use of their youth and freshness, and 'no good
offer refused' was the guiding rule of their young lives. Lucy married
an East India merchant, and set up a fine house in Porchester Terrace.
Maud married wealth personified in the person of a leading member of the
Tallow Chandlers' Company, and had her town house and country house, and
as fine a set of diamonds as a duchess.
But Georgina, the eldest, trifled with her chances, and her
twenty-seventh birthday beheld her pouring out her father's tea in a
small furnished house in a street off Portland Place, which the Colonel
had hired on his return from India, and which he declared himself unable
to maintain another year.
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