“And does she seem pleased with the match?”
“Why, I can scarcely say, for the letter contradicts itself in every passage. Now, she congratulates herself on having so charming a daughter-in-law; now, she suddenly stops short to observe what a pity it is that young men should be so precipitate! Now, she says what a great match it will be for her dear ward! and now, what a happy one it will be for Erpingham! In short, she does not know whether to be pleased or vexed; and that, pour dire vrai, is my case also.”
“Why, indeed,” observed the former speaker, “Miss Vernon has played her cards well. Lord Erpingham would have been a great match in himself, with his person and reputation. Ah! she was always an ambitious girl.”
“And a proud one,” said Lady G——. “Well, I suppose Erpingham House will be the rendezvous to all the blues, and wits, and savans. Miss Vernon is another Aspasia, I hear.”
“I hate girls who are so designing,” said the lady who spoke before, and had only one daughter, very ugly, who, at the age of thirty-five, was about to accept her first offer, and marry a younger son in the Guards. “I think she’s rather vulgar; for my part, I doubt if—I shall patronise her.”
“Well, what do you think of it, Mr. Godolphin?—you have seen Miss Vernon?”
Godolphin was gone.
It was about ten days after this conversation that Godolphin, waiting at a hotel in Dover the hour at which the packet set sail for Calais, took up the Morning Post; and the first passage that met his eye was the one which I transcribe:—
“Marriage in High Life.—On Thursday last, at Wendover Castle, the Earl of Erpingham, to Constance, only daughter of the celebrated Mr. Vernon. The bride was dressed, &c., ——” And then followed the trite, yet pompous pageantry of words—the sounding nothings—with which ladies who become countesses are knelled into marriage.
“The dream is over!” said Godolphin mournfully, as the paper fell to the ground; and, burying his face within his hands, he remained motionless till they came to announce the moment of departure.