So your nabob cousin is arrived: I hope he will fall in love with Emily; and remember, if he had obligations to Mrs. Rivers’s father, he had exactly the same to your grandfather.
He might spare ten thousand pounds very well, which would improve your petits soupers.
Adieu! Sir William Verville dines here, and I have but just time to dress.
Yours,
A. Fitzgerald.
LETTER CCXV.219.
To Captain Fitzgerald.
Bellfield, Nov. 17, Morning.
I have had a letter from Colonel Willmott myself to-day; he is still quite unacquainted with the state of our domestic affairs; supposes me a batchelor, and talks of my being his son-in-law as a certainty, not attending to the probability of my having other engagements.
His history, which he tells me in this letter, is a very romantic one. He was a younger brother, and provided for accordingly: he loved, when about twenty, a lady who was as little a favorite of fortune as himself: their families, who on both sides had other views, joined their interest to get him sent to the East Indies; and the young lady was removed to the house of a friend in London, where she was to continue till he had left England.
Before he went, however, they contrived to meet, and were privately married; the marriage was known only to her brother, who was Willmott’s friend.