He immediately fancied that Delamere and Emmeline might meet; and the pain such a suspicion brought with it, was by him, who had hardly ever felt an hour's uneasiness, considered as so great an evil, that he determined to put an end to it as soon as possible.
After an hasty breakfast in his own room, he summoned Maloney to attend him, and went over the accounts of the estates entrusted to him, with the state of which his Lordship declared himself well contented. And not knowing to whom else he could apply, to enquire for a situation for Emmeline, he told Maloney, that as Miss Mowbray was now of an age to require some alteration in her mode of life, he was desirous of finding for her a reputable house in some town in Wales, where she might lodge and board.
Maloney, encouraged by being thus consulted by his Lord, ventured, with many bows, blushes, and stammering apologies, to disclose to Lord Montreville his partiality to Miss Mowbray.
And this communication he so contrived to word, that his Lordship had no doubt of Emmeline's having allowed him to make it.
Lord Montreville listened therefore in silence, and without any marks of disapprobation, to the account Maloney proceeded to give of his prospects and property.
While he was doing so, family pride made a faint struggle in his Lordship's breast on behalf of his deserted ward. He felt some pain in determining, that a creature boasting a portion of the Mowbray blood, should sink into the wife of a man of such inferior birth as Maloney.
But when the advantages of so easily providing for her were recollected; when he considered that Maloney would be happy to take her with a few hundred pounds, and that all apprehensions in regard to his son would by that means for ever be at an end; avarice and ambition, two passions which too much influenced Lord Montreville, joined to persuade him of the propriety of the match; and became infinitely too powerful to let him listen to his regard to the memory of his brother or his pity for his deserted ward.
He thought, that as the existence of Emmeline was hardly known beyond the walls of the castle, he should incur no censure from the world if he consigned her to that obscurity to which the disadvantages of her birth seemed originally to have condemned her.
These reflections arose while Maloney, charmed to find himself listened to, was proceeding in his discourse.