The charming Alicia allowed him the honour of drinking tea with her, and was delighted with the thought that she had at last caught him in her snares. The moment she had hopes of him, she resolved to break her promise to Marvel; and by making a merit of sacrificing to Wright all his rivals, she had no doubt that she should work so successfully upon his vanity, as to induce him to break off his treaty with the Lincolnshire lady.
Wright quickly let her go on with the notion that she had the game in her own hands; at length he assumed a very serious look, like one upon the point of forming some grand resolution; and turning half away from her, said:
“But now, look ye, Miss Barton, I am not a sort of man who would like to be made a fool of. Here I’m told half the gentlemen of York are dying for you; and, as your friend Mrs. Stokes informed—”
“Mrs. Stokes is not my friend, but the basest and most barbarous of enemies,” cried Alicia.
“Why, now, this is strange! She was your friend yesterday; and how do I know but a woman may change as quick, and as short, about her lovers, as about her friends?”
“I never can change: fear nothing,” said Alicia, tenderly.
“But let me finish what I was saying about Mrs. Stokes; she told me something about one Mr. Marvel, I think they call him; now what is all that?”
“Nothing: he is a foolish young man, who was desperately in love with me, that’s all, and offered to marry me; but, as I told him, I am superior to mercenary considerations.”
“And is the affair broke off, then?” said Wright, looking her full in the face. “That’s in one word what I must be sure of: for I am not a man that would choose to be jilted. Sit you down and pen me a farewell to that same foolish young fellow. I am a plain-spoken man, and now you have my mind.”
Miss Barton was now persuaded that all Wright’s coldness had proceeded from jealousy: blinded by her passions, and alarmed by the idea that this was the moment in which she must either secure or for ever abandon Wright and his fortune, she consented to his proposal, and wrote the following tender adieu to Marvel: