When Ida refused two good offers of marriage,
Rosamond was as much astonished as the veriest strangers, who
wondered why the elder Miss Welwyn seemed bent on remaining
single all her life.
When the journey to London, to which I have already alluded, took
place, Ida accompanied her father and sister. If she had
consulted her own tastes, she would have remained in the country;
but Rosamond declared that she should feel quite lost and
helpless twenty times a day, in town, without her sister. It was
in the nature of Ida to sacrifice herself to any one whom she
loved, on the smallest occasions as well as the greatest. Her
affection was as intuitively ready to sanctify Rosamond's
slightest caprices as to excuse Rosamond's most thoughtless
faults. So she went to London cheerfully, to witness with pride
all the little triumphs won by her sister's beauty; to hear, and
never tire of hearing, all that admiring friends could say in her
sister's praise.
At the end of the season Mr. Welwyn and his daughters returned
for a short time to the country; then left home again to spend
the latter part of the autumn and the beginning of the winter in
Paris.
They took with them excellent letters of introduction, and saw a
great deal of the best society in Paris, foreign as well as
English. At one of the first of the evening parties which they
attended, the general topic of conversation was the conduct of a
certain French nobleman, the Baron Franval, who had returned to
his native country after a long absence, and who was spoken of in
terms of high eulogy by the majority of the guests present.
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