The same day that she sent this letter to the post, she despatched the following note to Almeria:
‘MY DEAR MISS TURNBULL,
“I am too well persuaded of the goodness of your heart to fear that you should think my present interference impertinent. We used to be very good friends in Yorkshire, and I am sure shall be just the same in London; therefore I write without ceremony, as friends should. I called upon you twice, but found you were, unluckily, not at home. Now I have a matter very near my heart to speak to you about, that perhaps will turn out as much to your satisfaction as to mine. I cannot express myself so well as I could wish in writing, but am sure you will not repent your kindness, if you will do us the honour of dining with us in a family way on Friday next; and in the mean time, let me beg you will not decide your choice of a companion. I cannot be more explicit, lest (as I have said once before to-day) I should deprive you of the pleasure of the surprise. Dear madam, forgive this freedom in one who most sincerely wishes you well (as Friday will prove). My nephew, Henry Wynne (whom you may remember a great admirer of yours), desires his best respects; and with every good wish I remain, Dear Miss Turnbull’s
“Affectionate humble servant,
“M. WYNNE.”
This letter at first surprised our heroine, and afterwards afforded subject for much ridicule to Mrs. Ingoldsby, to whom Almeria showed it. She laughed at the odd freedom of the Yorkshire dame, at the old-fashioned plainness of the style—parenthesis within parenthesis—at last concluding with respects and best wishes, and remaining dear Miss Turnbull’s humble servant. She opined, however, upon the third perusal of the letter, that Mrs. Wynne was anxious to present her nephew to Miss Turnbull, and that this was the real meaning of her curious note—that probably she wished to surprise her with the sight of some Yorkshire damsel, who had formed the reasonable expectation, that because Miss Turnbull had done her the honour to notice her ages ago in the country, she was to be her companion in town. Mrs. Ingoldsby further observed, that Mrs. Wynne, though she had not practised at court, was no bad politician in thus attempting to recommend a companion to Miss Turnbull, who would, of course, be entirely in her nephew’s interests. Almeria’s vanity was indirectly flattered by these insinuations, which tended to prove her vast consequence, in being thus the object of plots and counterplots; and she the more readily believed this, from the experience she had had of Lady Pierrepoint’s manoeuvres. “It is really a dreadful thing,” said she, “to be a great heiress. One must be so circumspect—so much upon one’s guard with all the world. But poor Mrs. Wynne shows her cards so plainly, one must be an idiot not to guess her whole play.”
To “mistake reverse of wrong for right” is one of the most common errors in the conduct of life. Our heroine being sensible that she had been ridiculously credulous in her dealings with Lady Pierrepoint, was now inclined to be preposterously suspicious. She determined with her next admirer to pursue a system diametrically opposite to that which she had followed with the marquis; she had shown him attractive complaisance; she was now prepared to display the repulsive haughtiness becoming the representative of two hundred thousand pounds: she had completely adopted Lady Pierrepoint’s maxim. That a lady should marry to increase her consequence and strengthen her connexions. Her former ideas, that love and esteem were necessary to happiness in a union for life, seemed obsolete and romantic; and the good qualities of her admirers, though they were always to be mentioned as the ostensible reasons for her choice, were never in reality to influence her decision.
To stoop at once from a marquis to a private gentleman would be terrible; yet that private gentleman was worthy of some little consideration, not because he was, as Almeria remembered, a man of excellent sense, temper, and character, but because he had a clear estate of eight thousand pounds a-year, and was next heir to an earldom.
Miss Turnbull cannot properly be called a female fortune-hunter; but, to coin a new name for our heroine, which may be useful to designate a numerous class of her contemporaries, she was decidedly a female title-hunter.
She accepted of the invitation to dinner, and, accompanied by a proper supporter in Mrs. Ingoldsby, went to Mrs. Wynne’s, dressed in the utmost extravagance of the mode, blazing in all the glory of diamonds, in hopes of striking admiration even unto awe upon the hearts of all beholders. Though she had been expressly invited to a family party, she considered that only as an humble country phrase to excuse, beforehand, any deficiency of magnificence. She had no doubt that the finest entertainment, and the finest company, Mrs. Wynne could procure or collect, would be prepared for her reception. She was somewhat surprised, especially as she came fashionably late, to find in the drawing-room only old Mrs. Wynne, her nephew, and a lady, who, from her dress and modest appearance, was evidently nobody. Miss Turnbull swept by her, though she had a disagreeable recollection of having somewhere seen this figure in a former state of existence. Mrs. Wynne, good soul! did not believe in wilful blindness, and she therefore said, with provoking simplicity, “Miss Turnbull, this is your good friend, Mrs. Henry Elmour—poor thing! she is sadly altered in her looks since you saw her, a gay rosy lass at Elmour Grove! But though her looks are changed, her heart, I can answer for it, is just the same as ever; and she remembers you with all the affection you could desire. She would not be like any other of her name, indeed, if she did otherwise. The Elmours were all so fond of you!”