“Yes—and I am glad of it, as it gives me an opportunity of indulging myself in going with you, my dear Temple. I am ready to set out at any moment.”
“God bless you! The sooner the better, then. This night in the mail, if you please. I’ll run and take our places,” said he, snatching up his hat.
“Better send,” cried Alfred stopping him: “my man can run and take places in a coach as well as you. Do you stay with me. We will go to the coffee-house, dine, and be ready to set off.”
Mr. Temple acceded.
“In the mean time,” said Alfred, “you have relations and connexions of your own who should be consulted.”
Mr. Temple said he was sure that all his relations and connexions would highly approve of an alliance with the Percy family. “But, in fact,” added he, “that is all they will care about the matter. My relations, though high and mighty people, have never been of any service to me: they are too grand, and too happy, to mind whether a younger son of a younger son sinks or swims; whether I live in single wretchedness or double blessedness. Not one relation has nature given, who cares for me half as much as the friend I have made for myself.”
Sincerely as Alfred was interested for his success, yet he did not let this friendship interfere with the justice due to his sister, of leaving her sole arbitress of a question which most concerned her happiness.
During the last stage of their journey, they were lucky enough to have the coach to themselves, and Mr. Temple made himself amends for the restraint under which he had laboured during the preceding part of the journey, whilst he had been oppressed by the presence of men, whose talk was of the lower concerns of life. After he had descanted for some time on the perfections of his mistress, he ended with expressing his surprise that his friend, who had often of late rallied him upon his being in love, had not guessed sooner who was the object of his passion.
Alfred said that the idea of Rosamond had occurred to him, because his friend’s absence of mind might be dated from the time of his last visit to Clermont-park; “but,” said Alfred, “as Lady Frances Arlington was there, and as I had formerly fancied that her ladyship’s wish to captivate or dazzle you, had not been quite without effect, I was still in doubt, and thought even your praises of Rosamond’s disposition and temper, compared with her ladyship’s, might only be ruse de guerre, or ruse d’amour.”
“There was no ruse in the case,” said Mr. Temple; “I confess that when I first emerged from my obscurity into all the light and life of the world of fashion, my eyes were dazzled, and before I recovered the use of them sufficiently to compare the splendid objects by which I found myself surrounded, I was wonderfully struck with the appearance of Lady Frances Arlington, and did not measure, as I ought, the immense difference between Lord Oldborough’s secretary, and the niece of the Duke of Greenwich. Lady Frances, from mere gaieté de coeur likes to break hearts; and she continually wishes to add one, however insignificant, to the number of her conquests. I, a simple man of literature, unskilled in the wicked ways of the fair, was charmed by her ladyship’s innocent naïveté and frank gaiety, and all that was