'"You know how soon I am to marry Miss Jobson. A mother-in-law is seldom beloved. I may die, and leave you unprovided for; for you know, Adelina, the circumstances into which your grandfather's will has thrown me. Our dear Charles, whenever he inherits my title, will repossess the fortune of my ancestors, and will, I am sure, act generously by you and William; but such a dependance, if not precarious, is painful; and by accepting the proposal of Mr. Trelawny, all my apprehensions will be at an end, and my Adelina secure of that affluence to which her merit as well as her birth entitles her. But powerful as these considerations are, let them not influence you if you feel any reluctance to the match. Were they infinitely stronger, I will never again name them, if in doing so I hazard persuading my daughter to a step which may render her for every unhappy."
'Tho' I was very far from feeling for Mr. Trelawny that decided preference which would in other circumstances have induced me to accept his hand, yet I found my father so desirous of my being settled, that as I had no aversion to the man, I could not resolve to disappoint him. Perhaps the prospect of escaping from the power of my mother-in-law, and of being mistress of an affluent fortune instead of living in mortifying dependance on her, might have too much influence on my heart. My father, however, obtained without any difficulty my consent to close with Mr. Trelawny's proposals. We all went to London, where Lord Westhaven married Miss Jobson, and the settlements were preparing by which Mr. Trelawny secured to me a jointure as great as I could have expected if my fortune had been equal to my rank.
'As the new Lady Westhaven was so soon to be relieved from the presence of a daughter she did not love, she behaved to me with tolerable civility. Occupied with her rank, she seemed to have infinite delight in displaying it to her city acquaintance. Her Ladyship thought a coronet so delightful an ornament, that the meanest utensils in her house were adorned with it; and she wore it woven or worked on all her cloaths, in the vain hope perhaps of counteracting the repelling effect of an hideous countenance, a discordant voice, and a manner more vulgar than either. I saw with concern that my father was not consoled by the possession of her great fortune, for the mortification of having given the name and place of his adored Adelina to a woman so unlike her in mind and person. He was seldom well; seldomer at home; and seemed to have no other delight than in hearing from his two sons and from his eldest daughter; and when we were alone, he told me that to see me married would also give him pleasure; but he appeared, I thought, less anxious for the match than when it was first proposed. The preparations, however, went on, and in six weeks were compleated.
'In that interval, I had seen Trelawny almost every day. He always seemed very good humoured, and was certainly very thoughtless. He loved me, or fancied he loved me, extremely; but I sometimes suspected that it was rather in compliance with the taste of others than his own; and that a favourite hunter or a famous pointer were very likely to rival me. My father sometimes laughed at his boyish fondness for such things, and the importance he annexed to them; and sometimes I thought he looked grave and hurt at observing it.
'For my own part, I saw his follies; but none that I did not equally perceive in the conduct of other young men. Tho' I had no absolute partiality to him, I was totally indifferent to every other man. I married him, therefore; and gave away my person before I knew I had an heart.
'We went immediately into Cornwall, to an old fashioned but magnificent family seat; where I was received by Mr. Trelawny's sister, a woman some years older than he was, and who had brought him up. The coarse conversation of this woman, which consisted entirely in details of family œconomy; and the stupidity of her husband and a booby son of fourteen, were but ill calculated to render my retirement pleasing. Having laughed and wondered once at the uncouth figures and obsolete notions of Mr. Trelawny's Cornish cousins, who hastened, in their best cloaths, to congratulate him, from places whose barbarous names I could not pronounce—and having twice entertained the voters of two boroughs which belonged to the family; I had exhausted all the delights of Cornwall, and prevailed on him to return to a country where I could see a few beings like myself.
'When I came back into the world, I was surrounded by a croud of idle people, whose admiration flattered the vanity of Trelawny more than it did mine; for I became accustomed to adulation, and it lost it's charms with it's novelty. Trelawny was continually with young men of fashion, who called themselves his friends; and who besides doing him the kindness to advise and instruct him in the disposal of his fortune, would have relieved him from the affections of his wife, if he had ever possessed them. They made love to me, with as little scruple as they borrowed money of him; and told me that neglect on the part of my husband, well deserved to be repaid with infidelity on mine: but I felt for these shallow libertines only disgust and contempt; and received their professions with so much coldness, that they left me, in search of some other giddy creature, who might not, by ill-timed prudery, belie the promise of early coquetry. It was yet however very much the fashion to admire me; and my husband seemed still to take some delight in hearing and reading in the daily papers that Lady Adelina Trelawny was the most elegant figure at Court, or that every beauty at the Opera was eclipsed on her entrance. The eagerness and avidity with which I had entered, from the confinement of the nursery, to a life of continual dissipation, was now considerably abated. I continued it from habit, and because I knew not how to employ my time otherwise; but I felt a dreary vacuity in my heart; and amid splendor and admiration was unhappy.
'The return of my elder brother from his first campaign in America, was the only real pleasure I had long felt. He is perhaps one of the most elegant and accomplished young men of his time; but to be elegant and accomplished is his least praise—His solid understanding, and his excellent heart, are an honour to his country and to human nature. That quick sense of honour, and that strictness of principle, which now make my greatest terror, give a peculiar lustre and dignity to his character. My father received him with that delight a father only can feel; and saw and gloried with all a father's pride, in a successor worthy of his ancestors.
'My brother, who had always loved me extremely, tho' we had been very little together, took up his abode at my house while he staid in England. Trelawny seemed to feel a sort of awe before him, which made him endeavour to hide his vices if not his weakness, while he remained with us. He was more attentive to me than he had long been. My brother hoped I was happy; and tho' Trelawny was a man whose conversation afforded him no pleasure, he behaved to him with every appearance of friendship and regard. He was soon however to return to his regiment; and my father, who had been in a declining state of health ever since his second marriage, appeared to grow worse as the period of separation approached. He seemed to have waited only for this beloved son to close his eyes; for a few days before he was again to take leave, my father found his end very rapidly approaching.
'Perfectly conscious of it, he settled all his affairs; and made a provision for me and my brother William out of the money of the present Lady Westhaven, which the marriage articles gave him a right to dispose of after her Ladyship's death if he left no children by her; and recommended us both to his eldest son.