"If Adrian were as and where he should be, I feel sure he would embrace this opportunity of doing his duty as the Head of the House without the smallest hesitation, and I have no doubt that he would offer the hospitality of Pulwick Priory and his Protection to these amiable young persons for as long as they remain unmarried.
"From you, my dear Nephew, who have undertaken under these melancholy family circumstances to fill your Brother's place, I do not, however, expect so much; all I ask is that you and my niece Sophia be kind enough to shelter and entertain your cousins for the space of two months, while I remain at Bath for the benefit of my Health.
"At my age (for it is of no use, nephew, for us to deny our years when any Peerage guide must reveal them pretty closely to the curious), and I am this month passing sixty-nine, at my age the charge of two high-spirited young Females, in whom conventional education has failed to subdue Aspirations for worldly happiness whilst it has left them somewhat inexperienced in the Conventions of Society, I find a little trying. It does not harmonise with the retired, peaceful existence to which I am accustomed (and at my time of life, I think, entitled), in which it is my humble endeavour to wean myself from this earth which is so full of Emptiness and to prepare myself for that other and better Home into which we must all resign ourselves to enter. And happy, indeed, my dear Rupert, such of us as will be found worthy; for come to it we all must, and the longer we live, the sooner we may expect to do so.
"The necessity of producing them in Society, is, however, rendered a matter of greater responsibility by the fact of the handsome Fortunes which these young creatures possess already, not to speak of their expectations."
Rupert, who had been listening to his aunt's letter, through the intermediary of Miss Sophia's depressing sing-song, with an abstracted air, here lifted up his head, and commanded the reader to repeat this last passage. She did so, and paused, awaiting his further pleasure, while he threw his handsome head back upon his chair, and closed his eyes as if lost in calculations.
At length he waved his hand, and Miss Sophia proceeded after the usual floundering:
"A neighbour of mine at Bunratty, Mrs. Hambledon of Brianstown, a lively widow (herself one of the Macnamaras of the Reeks, and thus a distant connection of the Ballinasloe branch of O'Donoghues), and whom I had reason to believe I could trust—but I will not anticipate—took a prodigious fancy to Miss Molly and proposed, towards the beginning of the Autumn, carrying her away to Dublin. At the same time the wet summer, producing in me an acute recurrence of that Affection from which, as you know, I suffer, and about which you never fail to make such kind Enquiries at Christmas and Easter, compelled me to call in Mr. O'Mally, the apothecary, who has been my very obliging medical adviser for so many years, and who strenuously advocated an immediate course of waters at Bath. In short, my dear Nephew, thus the matter was settled, your cousin Molly departed radiant with good spirits, and good looks for a spell of gayety in Dublin, while your cousin Madeleine, prepared (with equal content) to accompany her old aunt to Bath. It being arranged with Mrs. Hambledon that she should herself conduct Molly to us later on.
"We have been here about three weeks. Though persuaded by good Mr. O'Mally that the waters would benefit my old bones, I was actuated, I must confess, by another motive in seeking this Fashionable Resort. In such a place as this, thronged as it is by all the Rank and Family of England, one can at least know who is who, and I was not without hopes that my nieces, with their faces, their name, and their fortunes, would have the opportunity of contracting suitable Alliances, and thus relieve me of a charge for which I am, I fear, little fitted.
"But, alas! my dear Rupert, I was most woefully mistaken. Bath is distinctly not the place for two beautiful and unsophisticated Heiresses, and I am certainly neither possessed of the Spirits, nor of the Health to guard them from fortune-hunters and needy nameless Adventurers. While it is my desire to impress upon you, and my niece Sophia, that the conduct of these young ladies has been quite beyond reproach, I will not conceal from you that the attentions of a certain person, of the name of Smith, known here, and a favorite in the circles of frivolity and fashion as Captain Jack, have already made Madeleine conspicuous, and although the dear girl conducts herself with the utmost propriety, there is an air of Romance and mystery about the Young Man, not to speak of his unmistakable good looks, which have determined me to remove her from his vicinity before her Affections be irreparably engaged. As for Molly, who is a thorough O'Donoghue and the image of her grandmother, that celebrated Murthering Moll (herself the toast of Bath in our young days), whose elopement with the Marquis de Kermelégan, after he had killed an English rival in a duel, was once a nine-days' wonder in this very town, and of whom you must have heard, Mrs. Hambledon restored her to my care only three days ago, and she has already twenty Beaux to her String, though favouring nobody, I am bound to say, but her own amusement. Yesterday she departed under Mrs. Hambledon's chaperonage, in the Company of a dozen of the highest in rank here, on an expedition to Clifton; the while my demure Madeleine spends the day at the house of her dear friend Lady Maria Harewood, whither, I only learnt upon her return at ten o'clock under his escort, Captain Jack—in my days that sort of captain would have been strongly suspected, of having a shade too much of the Heath or the London Road about him—had likewise been convened. It was long after midnight when, with a great tow-row, a coach full of very merry company (amongst whom the widow Hambledon struck me as over-merry, perhaps) landed my other Miss sur le perron.
"This has decided me. We shall decamp sans tambou ni trompette. To-morrow, without allowing discussion from the girls (in which I should probably be worsted), we pack ourselves into my travelling coach, and find our Way to you. But, until we are fairly on the Road, I shall not even let these ladies know whither we are bound.