'The terms which you are upon with Mr Glenmurray! and my age and character! what can you mean?' angrily exclaimed Mrs Mowbray.
'I hope, my dear mother,' said Adeline tenderly, 'that you had long ere this guessed the attachment which subsists between Mr Glenmurray and me;—an attachment cherished by your high opinion of him and his writings; but which respect has till now made me hesitate to mention to you.'
'Would to heaven!' replied Mrs Mowbray, 'that respect had made you for ever silent on the subject! Do you suppose that I would marry my daughter to a man of small fortune,—but more especially to one who, as Sir Patrick informs me, is shunned for his principles and profligacy by all the world?'
'To what Sir Patrick says of Mr Glenmurray I pay no attention,' answered Adeline; 'nor are you, my dear mother, capable, I am sure, of being influenced by the prejudices of the world.—But you are quite mistaken in supposing me so lost to consistency, and so regardless of your liberal opinions and the books which we have studied, as to think of marrying Mr Glenmurray.'
'Grant me patience!' cried Mrs Mowbray; 'why, to be sure you do not think of living with him without being married?'
'Certainly, madam; that you may have the pleasure of beholding one union founded on rational grounds and cemented by rational ties.'
'How!' cried Mrs Mowbray, turning pale. 'I!—I have pleasure in seeing my daughter a kept mistress!—You are mad, quite mad.—I approve such unhallowed connexions!'
'My dearest mother,' replied Adeline, 'your agitation terrifies me,—but indeed what I say is strictly true; and see here, in Mr Glenmurray's book, the very passage which I so often have heard you admire.' As she said this, Adeline pointed to the passage; but in an instant Mrs Mowbray seized the book and threw it on the fire.
Before Adeline had recovered her consternation Mrs Mowbray fell into a violent hysteric; and long was it before she was restored to composure. When she recovered she was so exhausted that Adeline dared not renew the conversation; but leaving her to rest, she made up a bed on the floor in her mother's room, and passed a night of wretchedness and watchfulness,—the first of the kind which she had ever known.—Would it had been the last!
In the morning Mrs Mowbray awoke, refreshed and calm; and, affected at seeing the pale cheek and sunk eye of Adeline, indicative of a sleepless and unhappy night, she held out her hand to her with a look of kindness; Adeline pressed it to her lips, as she knelt by the bed-side, and moistened it with tears of regret for the past and alarm for the future.