"How can I see things, love, in the strange light you represent them? My mother never read me such lectures as you preach to Isabel, and I was scarcely her age when I married. I was congratulated on my good fortune, and you know we both drove immediately to Hamlet's. Pray let Isabel enjoy herself."
"Oh pray, papa, let me have Mr. Boscawen," cried Isabel, clasping her hands as the tears burst from her dark, blue eyes. "Do not say I am not to have Mr. Boscawen! and he has ordered me a tilbury cloak upon the certainty of my accepting him; it is to have a leopard's claw as a fastening round my throat! Oh papa, papa!"
"I have not uttered a word about refusing Mr. Boscawen, my love."
"Oh, thank you, papa, thank you!" and Isabel flew to embrace her father. "My own good papa, not to make me miserable!"
"You would be unhappy, then, if I declined Mr. Boscawen, Isabel?"
"Oh, papa, wretched!—the cloak too of no use, and I had so set my heart upon the leopard's claw!"
"A small 'forget-me-not' would have been in better taste, Isabel," observed her mother.
"No, I particularly admire the leopard's claw, because Mr. Boscawen liked it. And then, papa, we are to drive in his tilbury, and I am to have a fur cap with a tassel, and choose it myself—I shall be so happy!"
There was nothing more to be said. Isabel looked upon every thing connected with Mr. Boscawen en couleur de rose, and her imagination pictured Brierly as a home of enchantment. She believed her days were to glide away among rural sports and in juvenile assemblies—the summer would be dedicated to haymaking and gathering roses—the winter would be a continuity of music and dancing. If her father's remarks chased the smile from her lips, as he alluded to scenes of duty and the cares of a family, they were speedily recalled by Lady Wetheral's enumeration of the comforts which must attach to her situation.
"My dear Isabel, your father alarms you; but, trust me, there is nothing alarming in matrimony. You will have a large settlement, and a handsome allowance, therefore every thing will go smoothly. If you have a family, it won't much inconvenience you. Shut out the nurseries with baize doors, and you will be free from noise. I managed very well, for sometimes I did not see or hear you children for weeks."