Venetia by Georgette Heyer

Damerels are a very old family, and this man‟s father, though always perfectly civil, was said to have a great deal of self-consequence. There was nothing of that— to be seen—indeed, I thought his lordship had too little particularity! I don‟t mean to say that his manners gave me a disgust of him, but he has an odd, abrupt way that is a trifle too careless to please   me   ! As for the girls, they rated him very cheap—though I daresay they would not if he had behaved more prettily to them. He hardly spoke above a dozen words to them—the merest commonplace, too!”
    “How shabby!” said Venetia. “He is—I mean, he sounds to me quite   odious !”
    “Yes, but I was thankful for it!” said her ladyship earnestly. “Only think what my feelings must have been had he proved to be a man of insinuating address! And for Sir John to declare that dearest Clara has not enough beauty to engage the interest of such a man as Damerel is not at all to the point, besides being a most unnatural thing to say of his own daughter! He would have been well-served if Damerel   had   thrown out lures to Clara, bringing him in upon us as he did! But all he will say is that he doesn‟t choose to live on bad terms with his neighbours, and that it is a great piece of nonsense in me  to suppose that Damerel is so ramshackle as to behave improperly to any female in Clara‟s situation. Very pretty talking, when everyone knows he didn‟t scruple to seduce a lady under her husband‟s very nose!”

    “Who was she?” interrupted Venetia curiously.  “What became of her?”
    “I don‟t know that, but she was one of the Rendlesham girls—there were three of them,  and   all   great beauties, which was fortunate, because Rendlesham was as poor as a church mouse,  and   yet   they all made good marriages! Not that I mean to say   that   one prospered, and for my part  I shouldn‟t have liked it for one of my daughters, even if Sir John were as monstrously in the  wind as they say Rendlesham was. Well, for one thing he had the most peculiar name:   Vobster ! I  believe he came into  the world hosed and shod, as the saying is, but his father was a shocking  mushroom, and as for his grandfather I‟m sure no one ever knew who   he   was! The   on-dit   was  that he owned a two-to-one shop—at least, so my brother George was used to say!—but I
    daresay that was nothing but a Banbury story. At all events, Gregory Vobster was as rich as  Midas, which was what made him acceptable to Lord Rendlesham. He was used to play off all  the airs of an exquisite, I recall, but when the pinch came he was not at all up to the rig. Nothing  would prevail upon him to consent to a divorce! He behaved very shabbily, just wishing to be  revenged, you know, and if he hadn‟t broken his neck, overturning his curricle on the  Newmarket road, that wretched female would be still married to him! But the thing is, my dear,  that that happened not three years after the break-up of the marriage, and though I don‟t know   why,   I   do   know that she didn‟t marry Damerel, which everyone expected she would, of course.  Which gives me a very poor notion of him, and makes me excessively reluctant to receive him in  my house! What‟s more, if he hoped, by abandoning Lady Sophia, to become reconciled with his  own family he was well-served, for they utterly cast him off, and it wasn‟t until Lady Damerel  died that he came back to England. Indeed, if it hadn‟t been for his having inherited an  independence from old Matthew Stone—he was his godfather, and what they call a chicken- nabob—I daresay he must have been reduced to absolute penury—let alone not being able to run  off with Lady Sophia in the first place! Which all goes to show what folly it is to endow young  men with fortunes.”
    “Cast him off!” Venetia exclaimed. “They would have done better to have cast  themselves off!”
    “Cast