Page:Authors daughter v1.djvu/117

Rh mother materially through Mr. Hammond's liberality, and in due time she would take her children to England and give them all the advantages that money could obtain.

Although the Derricks and Lady Eveline had lost sight of Miss Hope, only hearing that she had married and gone to one of the colonies, she had been kept, for a few years at least, well informed as to the affairs of the family by her mother, who had formed an acquaintance with a poor relation of the Derricks, who was a neighbour of hers at Hastings. Mrs. Hammond still felt a keen interest in the most important and wealthiest people whom she had known, and from whom she had hoped and suffered so much. She therefore heard that John Derrick died at the age of thirty, leaving a widow and two children. She was sure that if Gerald Staunton returned from Sierra Leone alive, in spite of the most stringent marriage settlements by which her fortune would be reduced to a mere nothing if she married again, Lady Eveline would give her hand to he old love; but Mrs. Hammond was nearly as much surprised as other people to hear that this union took place eight or nine months after John Derrick's death. She had looked for some idea of decorum and propriety from a lady of rank; some regard to her position,