Secret, my friend! You are much mistaken if you think it is any secret. They say he is as like that Jones as ever son was like a father—but I am talking treason, and you must not betray me—People you know will be censorious, and it is rather remarkable, that since Jones’s death she has never added to your family stock.
There’s nothing remarkable in that, if the talking people knew what they talked about.
Why certainly, were the case as they give out, one son of that sort is quite enough, and were I in your place I should be apt to think him one more than was welcome.
I am at no trouble about him. His grandfather and his aunt are at all the pains of spoiling him.
Not by overmuch education I should think. Begging the young gentleman’s pardon, I take him to be a most egregious dunce.
Oh! if you take him to be that, I shall take him to be my own son. But with your leave we’ll say no more about him.
Agreed! Besides I know your time is nearly out. This however I must tell you in secret—Sir Owen’s life is despaired of, and his whole estate is settled and entailed upon my son: David will soon be of age, and probably I shall then have some other residence to seek. Your father I understand is in his seventy-fifth year, and your son in his fifteenth. A short time according to the course of nature may set us both free. In the mean time let me see you as frequently as you can contrive, and if I have been fortunate enough to make an impression on your heart, be assured you have interested mine no less; and so long as you continue to persuade me that I am agreeable in your eyes, neither Sir Arthur Floyd, nor any man, shall be other than indifferent to me.
Having said this, she reached out her hand, the gallant Philip pressed it to his lips, made his reverence, and departed.
CHAPTER V.
Mr. De Lancaster descants upon the Duties of a Preceptor in the learned Languages.
It is probably in the reader’s recollection, that De Lancaster in his last conversation with the Reverend Edward Wilson, had promised to collect his thoughts, and offer his opinion on the duties of a preceptor in the learned languages. There was little danger of his forgetting that promise, nor any likelihood of his being unprepared to execute it, for his mind was fully stored with all the several systems of the Greek philosophers.