"While Governor of Madras he is said to have realised about fifty thousand pounds, and a short time before he returned from India, he succeeded unexpectedly to the family property, about seven thousand a-year, beside which, now that his elder brother is dead, he is heir to his uncle, Lord Dunsmoor, whose title and estates, of full thirty thousand per annum, he must inherit. That is a sort of quizz which I think your ladyship will allow is not to be met with every day."
"No, certainly, as you say. If he should take a fancy to Madeline, I hope she won't think him too old."
"If Madeline should, like many other young people, be very silly, I should hope she would have your ladyship to think for her."
All this was of course said aside, and sotto voce. Had the situation been better adapted to confidential conversation, much more would have been said, particularly by Aunt Dorothea, who considered Mr. Cameron the very first prize in life's lottery.
At two or three-and-twenty, when a poor younger brother and "no match for any one," he had been a passionate lover of Aunt Dorothea, then a beautiful girl of nineteen. But a marriage at that time would have been too imprudent a thing to be thought of, and so they parted. This was five-and-thirty years ago. For about the first ten years both parties had been very faithful; but the affair had since, like most early engagements, died a natural death.
Aunt Dorothea, to do her justice, had too much good sense to dream of any one continuing to be a lover of hers at her present age. And as for Cameron, although a halo of romance had lingered around the remembered image of his "First Love," even 'till their meeting on the very morning of the evening we are now describing; it was the blooming girl of nineteen whom his fancy still painted, such as she had looked five-and-thirty years before; when vowing eternal truth, he had bade her a long farewell. One sight of our respectable friend Mrs. Dorothea Arden, now fifty-four years of age, banished in an instant every romantic idea as associated with the personal attractions of that lady.
The former lovers became, however, at once excellent friends; and in the course of that day Aunt Dorothea laid her plan for making up a match between one, whom she considered a sort of valuable heir-loom that ought not to be allowed to go out of the family, and her favourite niece, Madeline, who had always been reckoned like Mrs. Dorothea, and her aunt knew her to be still disengaged.
Woman—the delicate day lily, blooms her hour—fades, and disappears for ever from beauty's garden! Man—the hardy evergreen braves the cold storm of disappointment—stands through the long winter of delay—and when his genial season of prosperity at last arrives, finds fair companions still in the smiling buds of each succeeding spring.