Lady Pelham easily perceived that the conversation had been particular; and Hargrave did not long leave her in doubt as to the subject. He acquainted her with his pretensions to Laura, and begged her sanction to his addresses; assuring her that his intercourse with Lady Bellamer was entirely broken off, and that his marriage would secure his permanent reformation. He complimented Lady Pelham upon her liberality of sentiment and knowledge of the world; from both of which he had hopes, he said, that she would not consider one error as sufficient to blast his character. Lady Pelham made a little decent hesitation on the score of Lady Bellamer's prior claims; but was assured that no engagement had ever subsisted there. 'She hoped Lord Lincourt would not be averse.' She was told that Lord Lincourt anxiously desired to see his nephew settled. 'She hoped Colonel Hargrave was resolved that his married life should be irreproachable. Laura had a great deal of sensibility, it would break her heart to be neglected; and Lady Pelham was sure, that in that case the thought of having consented to the dear child's misery would be more than she could support!' Her Ladyship was vanquished by an assurance, that for Laura to be neglected by her happy husband was utterly impossible.
'Laura's inclinations then must be consulted; every thing depended upon her concurrence, for the sweet girl had really so wound herself round Lady Pelham's heart, that positively her Ladyship could not bear to give her a moment's uneasiness, or to press her upon a subject to which she was at all averse.' And, strange as it may seem, Lady Pelham at that moment believed herself incapable of distressing the person whom, in fact, she tormented with ceaseless ingenuity! Hargrave answered by confessing his fears that he was for the present less in favour than he had once been; but he disclosed Laura's former confessions of partiality, and insinuated his conviction that it was smothered rather than extinguished.
Lady Pelham could now account for Laura's long illness and low spirits; and she listened with eager curiosity to the solution of the enigma, which had so long perplexed her. She considered whether she should relate to the lover the sorrows he had caused. She judged (for Lady Pelham often judged properly) that it would be indelicate thus to proclaim to him the extent of his power; but, with the usual inconsistency between her judgment and her practice, in half an hour she had informed him of all that she had observed, and hinted all that she suspected. Hargrave listened, was convinced, and avowed his conviction that Lady Pelham's influence was alone necessary to secure his success. Her Ladyship said, 'that she should feel some delicacy in using any strong influence with her niece, as the amiable orphan had no friend but herself, had owed somewhat to her kindness, and might be biassed by gratitude against her own inclination. The fortune which she meant to bequeath to Laura might by some be thought to confer a right to advise; but, for her part, she thought her little all was no more than due to the person whose tender assiduities filled the blank which had been left in her Ladyship's maternal heart by the ingratitude and disobedience of her child.' This sentiment was pronounced in a tone so pathetic, and in language so harmonious, that, though it did not for a moment impose upon her hearer, it deceived Lady Pelham herself; and she shed tears, which she actually imagined to be forced from her by the mingled emotions of gratitude and of disappointed tenderness.
Lady Pelham had now entered on a subject inexhaustible; her own feelings, her own misfortunes, her own dear self. Hargrave, who in his hours of tolerable composure was the most polite of men, listened, or appeared to listen, with unconquerable patience, till he fortunately recollected an appointment which his interest in her Ladyship's conversation had before banished from his mind; when he took his leave, bearing with him a very gracious invitation to repeat his visit.
With him departed Lady Pelham's fit of sentimentality; and, in five minutes, she had dried her eyes, composed the paragraph which was to announce the marriage of Lord Lincourt (for she killed off the old peer without ceremony) to the lovely heiress of the amiable Lady Pelham; taken possession of her niece's barouche and four, and heard herself announced as the benefactress of this new wonder of the world of fashion. She would cut off her rebellious daughter with a shilling; give her up to the beggary and obscurity which she had chosen, and leave her whole fortune to Lady Lincourt; for so, in the fulness of her content, she called Laura. After some time enjoying her niece's prospects, or to speak more justly her own, she began to think of discovering how near they might be to their accomplishment; and, for this purpose, she summoned Laura to a conference.
Lady Pelham loved nothing on earth but herself; yet vanity, gratified curiosity, and, above all, the detection of a mere human weakness reducing Laura somewhat more to her own level awakened in her breast an emotion resembling affection; as, throwing her arms round her niece, she, in language half sportive, half tender, declared her knowledge of Laura's secret, and reproached her with having concealed it so well. Insulted, wronged, and forsaken by Hargrave, Laura had kept his secret inviolable, for she had no right to disclose it; but she scorned, by any evasion, to preserve her own. Glowing with shame and mortification, she stood silently shrinking from Lady Pelham's looks; till, a little recovering herself, she said, 'I deserve to be thus humbled for my folly in founding my regards, not on the worth of their object, but on my own imagination; and more, if it be possible, do I deserve, for exposing my weakness to one who has been so ungenerous as to boast of it. But it is some compensation to my pride,' continued she, raising her eyes, 'that my disorder is cured beyond the possibility of relapse.' Lady Pelham smiled at Laura's security, which she did not consider as an infallible sign of safety. It was in vain that Laura proceeded solemnly to protest her indifference. Lady Pelham could allow for self-deceit in another's case, though she never suspected it in her own. Vain were Laura's comments upon Hargrave's character; they were but the fond revilings of offended love. Laura did not deny her former preference; she even owed that it was the sudden intelligence of Hargrave's crimes which had reduced her to the brink of the grave; therefore Lady Pelham was convinced that a little perseverance would fan the smothered flame; and perseverance, she hoped, would not be wanting. Nevertheless, as her Ladyship balanced her fondness for contradicting by her aversion to being contradicted, and as Laura was too much in earnest to study the qualifying tone, the conference concluded rather less amicably than it began; though it ended by Lady Pelham's saying, not very consistently with her sentiments an hour before, that she would never cease to urge so advantageous a match, conceiving that she had a right to influence the choice of one whom she would make the heiress of forty thousand pounds. Laura was going to insist that all influence would be ineffectual, but her aunt quitted her without suffering her to reply. She would have followed to represent the injustice of depriving Mrs Herbert of her natural rights; but she desisted on recollecting that Lady Pelham's purposes were like wedges, never fixed but by resistance.
The time had been when Lady Pelham's fortune would have seemed to Hargrave as dust in the balance, joined with the possession of Laura. He had gamed, had felt the want of money; and money was no longer indifferent to him. But Laura's dower was still light in his estimation, compared with its weight in that of Lambert, to whom he accidentally mentioned Lady Pelham's intention. That prudent person calculated that £40,000 would form a very handsome addition to a fund upon which he intended to draw pretty freely. He had little doubt of Hargrave's success; he had never known any woman with whom such a lover could fail. He thought he could lead his friend to bargain for immediate possession of part of his bride's portion, and, for certainty of the rest in reversion, before parting with his liberty. He allowed two, or perhaps even three months for the duration of Laura's influence; during which time he feared he should have little of her husband's company at the gaming-table; but from thenceforth, he judged that the day would be his own, and that he should soon possess himself of Hargrave's property, so far as it was alienable. He considered that, in the meantime, Laura would furnish attraction sufficient to secure Hargrave's stay at —, and he trusted to his own dexterity for improving that circumstance to the best advantage. He failed not, therefore, to encourage the lover's hopes, and bestowed no small ridicule on the idea that a girl of nineteen should desert a favourite on account of his gallantry.
Cool cunning would engage with fearful odds against imprudence, if it could set bounds to the passions, as well as direct their course. But it is often deceived in estimating the force of feelings which it knows only by their effects. Lambert soon found that he had opened the passage to a torrent which bore all before it. The favourite stimulus found, its temporary substitute was almost disregarded; and Hargrave, intoxicated with his passion, tasted sparingly of the poisoned cup which his friend designed for him. His time and thoughts were again devoted to Laura, and gaming was only sought as a relief from the disappointment and vexation which generally attended his pursuit. The irritation of his mind, however, made amends for the lessened number of opportunities for plundering him, by rendering it easier to take advantage of those which remained.
The insinuating manners and elegant person of Hargrave gained daily on the favour of Lady Pelham; for the great as well as the little vulgar are the slaves of mere externals. She permitted his visits at home and his attendance abroad, expatiating frequently on the liberality of sentiment which she thus displayed. At first these encomiums on her own conduct were used only to disguise from herself and others her consciousness of its impropriety; but she repeated them till she actually believed them just, and considered herself as extending a charitable hand to rescue an erring brother from the implacable malignity of the world.
She was indefatigable in her attempts to promote his success with Laura. She lost no opportunity of pressing the subject. She obstinately refused to be convinced of the possibility of overcoming a strong prepossession. Laura, in an evil hour for herself, thoughtlessly replied, that affection was founded on the belief of excellence, and must of course give way when the foundation was removed. This observation had just fallacy sufficient for Lady Pelham's purpose. She took it for her text, and harangued upon it with all the zeal and perseverance of disputation. She called it Laura's theory; and insisted that, like other theorists, she would shut her eyes against the plainest facts, nay, stifle the feelings of her own mind, rather than admit what might controvert her opinion. She cited all the instances which her memory could furnish of agricultural, and chemical, and metaphysical theorism; and, with astonishing ingenuity, contrived to draw a parallel between each of them and Laura's case. It was in vain that Laura qualified, almost retracted her unlucky observation. Her adversary would not suffer her to desert the untenable ground. Delighted with her victory, she returned again and again to the attack, after the vanquished had appealed to her mercy; and much more than 'thrice she slew the slain.'