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The Heir of Redclyffe by Charlotte Mary Yonge
page 19 of 899 (02%)
hero ever failed to fall in love with his guardian's beautiful
daughter.

'If his guardian had a beautiful daughter,' said Laura, resolved not to
be disconcerted.

'Did you ever hear such barefaced fishing for compliments?' said
Charles; but Amabel, who did not like her sister to be teased, and was
also conscious of having wasted a good deal of time, sat down to
practise. Laura returned to her drawing, and Charles, with a yawn,
listlessly turned over a newspaper, while his fair delicate features,
which would have been handsome but that they were blanched, sharpened,
and worn with pain, gradually lost their animated and rather satirical
expression, and assumed an air of weariness and discontent.

Charles was at this time nineteen, and for the last ten years had been
afflicted with a disease in the hip-joint, which, in spite of the most
anxious care, caused him frequent and severe suffering, and had
occasioned such a contraction of the limb as to cripple him completely,
while his general health was so much affected as to render him an
object of constant anxiety. His mother had always been his most
devoted and indefatigable nurse, giving up everything for his sake, and
watching him night and day. His father attended to his least caprice,
and his sisters were, of course, his slaves; so that he was the
undisputed sovereign of the whole family.

The two elder girls had been entirely under a governess till a month or
two before the opening of our story, when Laura was old enough to be
introduced; and the governess departing, the two sisters became
Charles's companions in the drawing-room, while Mrs. Edmonstone, who
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