Charlotte Smith

“ Melton really did make his addresses to one of those Denzils—Ridiculous!—one can hardly think it possible. My mother, Lady Sophia, and Miss Milsington, are amazed at my thinking of this as an objection; and the latter, (who certainly speaks from experience) assures me, I may live and die Mary Ellesmere, if I wait till I find a man who has never before had an attachment—yet Frederic Fitz-Raymond is that man!" In short, the fact was, that the vanity and the love of the young lady were engaged on one side, her interest and ambition on the other ”

“ Frederic!—could you have but seen him, my friend, could you but hear him, you would not for a moment be surprised at my wavering—he is amiable to a degree there is in his manner so much fashion—so much elegance! He has only one brother, who is now serving in the army under the Duke of York. He declares, that he should really be sorry if any thing happened to his brother. ”

“ Very vain are the projects of weak-sighted mortals—Mr. Darnly came, and saw, and was conquered, but not by the maturer beauties of the elder sister—the little wild Theodora, with her light flaxen hair half hiding her very fair face:—her childish manners and innocent simplicity made, at the first interview, a slave of the Nabob of Darnly park. There was not much above five-and-twenty years difference in their ages, though there appeared perhaps a little more, "because fair people always look younger than they are ”

“ Darnly, (with whom Mr. Ellesmere had taken care to cultivate an acquaintance in town, and who was now asked to dinner at Eddisbury, Sir Maynard having previously left his card in due form,) Lady Ellesmere began a very long and very sensible discourse on the folly of young women, who, before they were judges of what would constitute their happiness, suffered themselves to be entangled in attachments which prudence and reason afterwards forbade; and having finished the exordium, she glided into an eulogium of Darnly Park, and on the riches of its possessor ”

“ Miss Ellesmere was, it is true, very much in love; but she was a woman of sense; and women of sense at seven and twenty, are competent to the control of weaknesses that run away with them at seventeen. So, as her lover had failed in one material point, that of determining to marry before he had got a benefice, or possessed his fortune, (which a man very much in love ought at least to have offered,) Miss Ellesmere affecting to feel a proper contest in her gentle bosom, between the fatal affection so long nourished there, and her duty towards her family, consented to hear Mr. Darnly, if Mr. ”

“ D'Alonville could not help enquiring if there was none from Mrs. Denzil? Ellesmere answered, no; "But perhaps, added he, "some of my letters may speak of her and her family." He opened and read slightly over that from his father—It was short, and referred him to his brother's letter for intelligence, which, he said, could not fail to be pleasing to his son Edward. This being inspected, ran thus:—
DEAR EDWARD,
THERE is nothing more highly gratifying to a man of a certain turn of mind, than to announce to any of its branches the prosperity of his family ”

“ Melton, about that foreigner; and that it was with difficulty you were prevented from proceeding to an hostile discussion of the question, whatever it might be, between you. An officious old woman, a Mrs. Risby, has been so impertinent as to tell Mary all this. Her pride, which women ever place improperly, has taken the alarm; and she will not give her ultimatum to her lover, Mr. Melton, till this matter is cleared up. This you, brother Edward, can easily do; and I expect it of you, as does Sir Maynard.—I think I need say no more ”