“Still, though she is a good lass in most things, I must own to ye that she bath a strange vein of obstinacy in her, which she comes by from her mother.”
“Then I’ll use that same obstinacy to win her. Dost not know that every quality in a female is but a means by which to ensnare her? Let me once know a woman’s virtues and frailties, and I’ll make each one of them serve my suit.”
“’T is more than a month ye’ve been striving to win her regard.”
“Ay; but for some reason, in Philadelphia I could ne’er keep my head when with her, and as often went back as forward, curse it! ‘Better slip with foot than with tongue,’ runs the old saying, and I did both with her. I’ve learned my lesson now, and once give me a clear field and ye shall see how ’t will be.”
The squire shook his head. “She’s promised to Major Hennion, and after much folly and womanishness at last she’s found her mind, and tells me she will cheerfully wed him.”
“And how will the lot of ye live, man?” asked Clowes, crossly. “Hast not had word that Jersey has enacted a general act of forfeiture and escheatage ’gainst all Royalists?”
“That I’d not,” answered the squire, pulling a long face. “I suppose that has taken Greenwood from us?”
“Ay, for I saw the very advertisement of the sale, and have not told ye before merely to spare you distress. And ’t will strip Hennion of his acres as well, I take it. Wilt deliberately marry her to a penniless man?”
“Boxely never was his, and I doubt not his scamp of a father will find some way to save it to him. I’ll not tarry longer, for ’t is ill news ye have just broke to me, and I must carry it to Matilda. It gives us but a black future to which to look forward.”
Mr. Meredith gone from the room, the commissary took from his pocket a copy of Gaines’ “New York Gazette and Weekly Mercury,” which had come to him but that morning, and re-read an account it contained, taken from the “New Jersey Gazette,” of the sale of Greenwood to Esquire Hennion. “’T is my devil’s ill luck that he, of all men, should buy it,” he muttered. “However, if I can but get them to New York, away from this dashing dragoon, and then persuade them to cross the Atlantic, ’t will matter not who owns it.” He rose, stretched himself, and as he did so, he repeated the words:—