Matilda suddenly stopped, unable to articulate the rest of her good wishes, and Mr. Harewood eagerly said—“As to that we will say nothing; I trust Ellen will make a good wife; I am sure she has had a good example.”
“Ellen!” screamed Matilda; “is it you, Ellen? you that are going to be married—you?”
“Dear me, how astonished you look! I suppose I shall be married some time. I told you that perhaps Mr. Belmont might, some time——”
“My dear, dear Ellen, pardon my dulness, and accept my sincerest congratulations. May Heaven bless you, and him you prefer, and make you both as happy as you deserve to be!”
“So, so!” cried Mr. Harewood; “if we had never come up stairs, this mighty secret, which, for my part, I told an hour ago down stairs, would never have been revealed. But pray, Matilda, who did you conclude was the marrying person at our house, if it were not Ellen?”
“You have sons, sir,” tremulously articulated Matilda, not choosing to trust her tongue with a name that dwelt ever on her heart.
“Oh, tut, tut, there is no marrying for my boys. Charles is disposed of, and if Edmund can take a wife at thirty, he will be better off than many in his profession; he is now but a little past five-and-twenty, you know.”
“He danced with a very beautiful woman last night,” said Matilda, eagerly, and with recovered vivacity.
“So I understand; she is a bride, and his first fee was given for a consultation on her marriage-settlements.”
Matilda breathed; the lustre of her eye, the glow on her cheek, could not be mistaken by the fond parent, who now clearly understood the cause of Matilda’s frequent despondency, and the refusals she had given to all offers of marriage.