A modest income, and yet, as I have been given to understand, they might
have married well for the money.
In those days, particularly in Ireland, men went very cheap, and the
Misses Blake, one and both, could, before they left off mourning, have
wedded, respectively, a curate, a doctor, a constabulary officer, and
the captain of a government schooner.
The Misses Blake looked higher, however, and came to England, where rich
husbands are presumably procurable. Came, but missed their market. Miss
Kathleen found only one lover, William Craven, whose honest affection
she flouted; and Miss Susannah found no lover at all.
Miss Kathleen wanted a duke, or an earl--a prince of the blood royal
being about that time unprocurable; and an attorney, to her Irish ideas,
seemed a very poor sort of substitute. For which reason she rejected the
attorney with scorn, and remained single, the while dukes and earls were
marrying and intermarrying with their peers or their inferiors.
Then suddenly there came a frightful day when Kathleen and Susannah
learned they were penniless, when they understood their trustee had
robbed them, as he had robbed others, and had been paying their interest
out of what was left of their principal.
They tried teaching, but they really had nothing to teach.
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