"No," thought Vesta, "I am to keep, at least, my mind maiden and chaste, instead of playing the unstable coquette with that. I will not let him begin to think me weak and changeful already."
To see if there was the least glimmer of relief from this marriage Vesta crossed to her mother's room, and found Mrs. Custis with her head wrapped in handkerchiefs steeped in cologne, and a vial of laudanum in her hand, and in a condition bordering on hysteria.
"Mamma," said poor Vesta, "are you in pain?"
"Oh!" screamed Mrs. Custis, "I am just dying here of cruelty and brutality. Your father is a villain. I'll have that rascal, Milburn, killed. Go get me ink and paper, daughter, and sit here and write me a letter to my brother, Allan McLane, in Baltimore. He shall settle with Judge Custis for this robbery, and take you and me back to Baltimore, leaving your father to go to the almshouse or the jail, I don't care which."
"Mother," exclaimed Vesta, "what a sin! to abuse poor father now in all his trouble!"
"Trouble!" echoed Mrs. Custis, mockingly, "what trouble has he had, I would like to know? Living in the woods like a Turk among his barefooted forest concubines! Spending my money, raked and scraped by my poor father in the sugar importation, to make puddle iron out of the swamp, and be considered a smart man! The family is broken up. We are paupers, and now 'it is save yourself.' I'll take care of you if I can, but your father may starve for any aid I will give him."
"Then he shall have the only aid in my power, mother," said Vesta, decisively.
"Your aid!" Mrs. Custis exclaimed. "What have you got? Your jewels, I suppose? How long will they keep him? You had better keep your jewels, girl, for your wedding, and have it come quickly, for marriage is now your only salvation."
"My last jewel shall go, then," Vesta said, with a pale resolution that darted through her veins like ice.
"Save your jewels," Mrs. Custis continued, "and choose a husband before this thing is noised abroad! You have a good large list to select from. There is your cousin, Chase McLane, crazy for you, and with an estate in Kent. There is that young fool Carroll, with thousands of acres on the western shore, and the widower Hynson of King George, Virginia, with eighty slaves and his stables full of race-horses. You can marry any of these Dennis boys, or take Captain Ringgold of Frederick, who lives in elegance at West Point, or be mistress of Tench Purvience's mansion on Monument Square in Baltimore. All you have to do is to write a letter, saying: 'I expect you,' or, what is better, take to-morrow's steamer for Baltimore and use your Uncle Allan's house and become engaged and married there."