In Oxford Road she desired the coachman to proceed to Harley Street. She alighted at Lady Dundas's door, paid him his fare, and stepped into the hall before she perceived that a travelling-carriage belonging to her guardian had driven away to afford room for her humble equipage.
"Is Sir Robert Somerset come to town?" she hastily inquired of the porter.
"No, madam; but Mr. Somerset is just arrived."
The next minute Miss Beaufort was in the drawing-room, and clasped within the arms of her cousin.
"Dear Mary!"—"Dear Pembroke!" were the first words which passed between these two affectionate relatives.
Miss Dorothy, who doted on her nephew, taking his hand as he seated himself between her and his cousin, said, in a congratulatory voice, "Mary, our dear boy has come to town purposely to take us down."
"Yes, indeed," rejoined he; "my father is moped to death for want of you both. You know I am a sad renegade! Lord Avon and Mr. Loftus have been gone these ten days to his lordship's aunt's in Bedfordshire; and Sir Robert is so completely weary of solitude, that he has commanded me"—bowing to the other ladies—"to run off with all the fair inhabitants of this house sooner than leave you behind."
"I shall be happy at another opportunity to visit Somerset Hall,"
returned Lady Dundas; "but I am constrained to spend this summer in
Dumbartonshire. I have not yet seen the estate my poor dear Sir
Hector bought of the Duke of Dunbar."
Pembroke offered no attempt to shake this resolution. In the two or three morning calls he had formerly made with Sir Robert Somerset on the rich widow, he saw sufficient to make him regard her arrogant vulgarity with disgust; and for her daughters, they were of too artificial a stamp to occupy his mind any longer than with a magic- lantern impression of a tall woman with bold eyes, and the prettiest yet most affected little fairy he had ever beheld.
After half an hour's conversation with this family group, Miss Beaufort sunk into abstraction. During the first month of Mary's acquaintance with Thaddeus, she did not neglect to mention in her correspondence with Pembroke having met with a very interesting and accomplished emigrant, in the capacity of a tutor at Lady Dundas's. But her cousin, in his replies, beginning to banter her on pity being allied to love, she had gradually dropped all mention of Constantine's name, as she too truly found by what insensible degrees the union had taken place within her own breast. She remembered these particulars, whilst a new method of accomplishing her present project suggested itself; and determining (however extraordinary her conduct might seem) to rest on the rectitude of her motives, a man being the most proper person to transact such a business with propriety, she resolved to engage Pembroke for her agent, without troubling Miss Dorothy about the affair.