Yet every day, every hour was steadily preparing that meeting.
PART II
CHAPTER IX
THE BARGAIN CONCLUDED
The letters on which Greville counted set in between him and his uncle directly Hamilton was re-established in the Palazzo Sessa. The complaisant uncle wrote also to Emma, dwelling much on the charms of Naples and its society and on its extraordinary advantages for the pursuit of accomplishments never to be attained in England. Even in the midst of growing uneasiness Emma was flattered by those letters, for he wrote not as to the ignorant, unthinking girl whom she felt herself daily with Greville, but rather as to the “phylosopher” she fondly hoped to make herself. Was it the Emma of Up Park and of a still darker past who could receive such letters as this from the great Hamilton, the celebrated Ambassador? She felt it a great, an amazing promotion.
“The whole art is, really, to live all the days of our life: and not with anxious care disturb the sweetest hour that life affords—which is the present. Admire the Creator, and all His works to us incomprehensible: and do all the good you can upon earth, and take the chance of eternity without dismay.”
She was charmed with this easy good-humoured rationalism. It fell in with her own to perfection. To be allowed to enjoy the present was all she ever asked. To admire a Creator who was responsible for her own embellishments and had made them the means of attracting Greville was pleasant so long as He asked no more, and to be charitable was always a delight to her good nature if she had the chance of going beyond the halfpenny limit which Greville had enjoined. She wrote back to the genial preacher with a docile enthusiasm which delighted him. Greville wrote also, every word considered.
“Emma is very grateful for your remembrance. Her picture shall be sent by the first ship. She certainly is much improved since she has been with me. She has none of the bad habits which giddiness and inexperience encouraged. I am sure she is attached to me or she would not have refused the offers which I know to have been great, and such is her spirit that on the least slight or expression of my being tired or burdened by her, I am sure she would not only give up the connexion but would not accept a farthing for future assistance.”
Greville knew while he wrote these words that they were not wholly true. Emma had endured many slights and reproofs and had mounted upon no outraged dignity. As to help, in her forlorn condition, passionately attached to himself, she would accept it if only for the sake of the bond it implied. But it might be so, it read well, and would impress Hamilton.