proceed even if he ever decided to make a move. A widow was not a spinster. She was more her own mistress. Yet it seemed improbable that she would agree to any union without the full consent of her family. And it was not likely that that would be immediately forthcoming.
And yet. And yet. To be married to the sister of a duke! And money was not sneezed at even in the great houses. If she were truly as poor as his reports told him, the Duke might be glad to get her off his hands. A lot depended on the approach. In any event he did not wish to play his cards too soon. How could one judge of a single meeting? How contrive other meetings without declaring one's interest too obviously? At length he took his problem to his old friend Sir Christopher Hawkins.
Sir Christopher laughed. 'Before heaven, there's nothing easier, my dear fellow. She is at present staying with her aunt at Godolphin. I'll ask 'em over for a night and you can dine and sup with us.'
So they met a second time, and although there was a numerous company there was opportunity for conversation, and Lady Harriet soon received the message. It made a difference to her. Her brilliant dark eyes became a little absent-minded as if her thoughts were already idly turning over all the implications of his presence. She talked to him politely but with a slight irony that made him uncomfortable. Yet she was not unfriendly, as she surely must have been if she had decided at once that his suit was impossible.
Her aunt, a pale tiny woman who looked as if the leeches had been at her, also received the message, and to her the message was clearly distasteful. The Osborne family of course had considerable property in Cornwall, and it could have been that Miss Darcy knew him and his history too well.
So the second meeting ended inconclusively. But it was not one of total discouragement. And a hint of opposition always braced George whether he was trying to gain possession of a woman or a tin mine.
Business took him to Manchester in September, and he was gone a month. He had only been north of Bath once before, when he visited Liverpool and some of the mill towns in 1808. These new mushroom towns of Lancashire excited him with their belching chimneys, their seething, smoky streets, the crowds of grey-faced cheerful workers tramping over the greasy cobbles into the mills and factories. Here was money being made, in new ways. Factories, new factories, were springing up everywhere, employing twenty workers in one place, a thousand in another, and with every variation in between. The vitality of a place like Manchester was attracting the most enterprising of the working orders, who came in from town and countryside hoping by hard work, intelligence and thrift to become one of the employers instead of one of the employed. A few succeeded - enough to inspire the others - and when they did so succeed climbed virtually from rags to riches in a half-dozen years. It was an inspiring sight, and George did not much notice, or at least was not affected by, the other side of the picture. The horrible conditions in which most of the millhands both lived and worked was a natural by-product of industry and progress; it literally was part of the machinery, the human element which drove and operated the looms, the bobbins, the spindles, the flying threads, the warp and woof of cotton manufacture which created riches where none had ever been before.
He knew, of course, that half the labour force was under eighteen years of age, that Irish parents sold their children to the mills, and that the workhouses of England disposed of their pauper children in the same way, that many children of ten years old and less had to work sixteen hours a day. Several of his more sentimental Whig colleagues, such as Whitbread, Sheridan and Brougham, had made speeches on the subject in Parliament and created a great fuss about it, so he could hardly be in ignorance of the statistics. But while he regretted them in
And yet. And yet. To be married to the sister of a duke! And money was not sneezed at even in the great houses. If she were truly as poor as his reports told him, the Duke might be glad to get her off his hands. A lot depended on the approach. In any event he did not wish to play his cards too soon. How could one judge of a single meeting? How contrive other meetings without declaring one's interest too obviously? At length he took his problem to his old friend Sir Christopher Hawkins.
Sir Christopher laughed. 'Before heaven, there's nothing easier, my dear fellow. She is at present staying with her aunt at Godolphin. I'll ask 'em over for a night and you can dine and sup with us.'
So they met a second time, and although there was a numerous company there was opportunity for conversation, and Lady Harriet soon received the message. It made a difference to her. Her brilliant dark eyes became a little absent-minded as if her thoughts were already idly turning over all the implications of his presence. She talked to him politely but with a slight irony that made him uncomfortable. Yet she was not unfriendly, as she surely must have been if she had decided at once that his suit was impossible.
Her aunt, a pale tiny woman who looked as if the leeches had been at her, also received the message, and to her the message was clearly distasteful. The Osborne family of course had considerable property in Cornwall, and it could have been that Miss Darcy knew him and his history too well.
So the second meeting ended inconclusively. But it was not one of total discouragement. And a hint of opposition always braced George whether he was trying to gain possession of a woman or a tin mine.
Business took him to Manchester in September, and he was gone a month. He had only been north of Bath once before, when he visited Liverpool and some of the mill towns in 1808. These new mushroom towns of Lancashire excited him with their belching chimneys, their seething, smoky streets, the crowds of grey-faced cheerful workers tramping over the greasy cobbles into the mills and factories. Here was money being made, in new ways. Factories, new factories, were springing up everywhere, employing twenty workers in one place, a thousand in another, and with every variation in between. The vitality of a place like Manchester was attracting the most enterprising of the working orders, who came in from town and countryside hoping by hard work, intelligence and thrift to become one of the employers instead of one of the employed. A few succeeded - enough to inspire the others - and when they did so succeed climbed virtually from rags to riches in a half-dozen years. It was an inspiring sight, and George did not much notice, or at least was not affected by, the other side of the picture. The horrible conditions in which most of the millhands both lived and worked was a natural by-product of industry and progress; it literally was part of the machinery, the human element which drove and operated the looms, the bobbins, the spindles, the flying threads, the warp and woof of cotton manufacture which created riches where none had ever been before.
He knew, of course, that half the labour force was under eighteen years of age, that Irish parents sold their children to the mills, and that the workhouses of England disposed of their pauper children in the same way, that many children of ten years old and less had to work sixteen hours a day. Several of his more sentimental Whig colleagues, such as Whitbread, Sheridan and Brougham, had made speeches on the subject in Parliament and created a great fuss about it, so he could hardly be in ignorance of the statistics. But while he regretted them in
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