About thirty years
ago, Miss Maria Ward of Huntingdon, with only seven thousand pounds, had the
good luck to captivate Sir Thomas Bertram, of Mansfield Park, in the county of
Northhampton, and to be thereby raised to the rank of a baronet’s lady, with
all the comforts and consequences of an handsome house and large income.
All Huntingdon
exclaimed on the greatness of the match, and her uncle, the lawyer, himself,
allowed her to be at least three thousand pounds short of any equitable claim
to it.
She had two sisters
to be benefited by her elevation; and such of their acquaintance as thought
Miss Ward and Miss Frances quite as handsome as Miss Maria, did not scruple to
predict their marrying with almost equal advantage.
But there certainly
are not so many men of large fortune in the world, as there are pretty women to
deserve them.
Mansfield Park - Volume
I – Chapter 1.
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