But the young student was also fond of rural pursuits and
domestic occupations. He lived mostly at home, enjoying the gentle
solace of elegant modern literature and the graces of music, with the
ever blameless delights of an accomplished female society, at the
head of which his revered mother had presided, accompanied by his
lively sister Dorothy and the sweet Edith Beaufort, whom he had
gradually learned to love like his own soul. His heart became yet
more closely knit to her when his beloved parent died, which sad
event occurred about a year after the death of Edith's own mother,
who on her widowhood had continued to live more with her sister, Lady
Arabella Somerset, than at her bereaved home. Edith's filial sorrow
was renewed in the loss of her maternal aunt, and her tenderest
sympathy reciprocated the tears of her son. Their hearts blended
together in those tears, and both felt that "they were comforted."
Time did not long pass on before the happy Robert communicated their
mutual attachment to his father, petitioning for his consent to woo
for the hand of her whose heart he had already gained. But the
baronet, in some surprise at what he heard, refused to give his
sanction to any such premature engagement, first, on account of the
applicant's "extreme youth;" and second, being a younger scion of his
house, it might not be deemed well of in the world should he, the
guardian of his niece and her splendid fortune, show so much haste to
bestow her on his comparatively portionless son.
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