Mr Lenman was certainly sufficiently tormented; but so great a proficiency in coquetry at so early an age was no discouragement to his hopes. There are no people so often the dupe of their own arts as coquettes; especially when they become so very early in life; therefore, instead of being damped in his pursuit, he adapted his behaviour to her foible, vanity, and by assuming an air of indifference, could, when he pleased, put an end to her affected reserve; though he was not so impolite a lover as quite to deny her the gratification she expected from her little arts. He found means, however, to command her attention by the very serious proposal of matrimony. She had no great inclination for the state, but the novelty pleased her. The pleasure she received from his addresses she mistook for love, and imagined herself deeply enamoured, when she was in reality only extremely flattered; the common error of her age. In the company she had kept matrimony appeared in no very formidable light; she did not see that it abridged a woman of any of the liberties she already enjoyed; it only afforded her an opportunity of choosing her own diversions; whereas her taste in those points sometimes differed from her aunt's, to whom, however, she was obliged to submit. Thus prepossessed, both in favour of her lover and his proposal, she listened to him with more attention than she chose he should perceive; but he was too well acquainted with the pretty arts of coquetry not to see through them. He therefore took courage to insinuate his desire of a private marriage, and ventured to persuade her to take a trip with him to the northern side of Berwick upon Tweed.
Lady Mary could not see, as Mr Lenman's fortune was considerable and hers entirely precarious, why he was so apprehensive of not being accepted by her aunt, but there was something spirited in those northern journeys that had always been the objects of her envy. An adventure was the supreme pleasure of life and these pretty flights gave marriage all the charms of romance. To be forced to fly into another kingdom to be married gave her an air of consequence; vulgar people might tie the knot at every parish church, but people of distinction should do everything with an eclat. She imagined it very probable that her aunt would consent to her union with Mr Lenman; for though he was not equal to her in birth, yet he was her superior in fortune; but yet she looked upon his fears of a refusal as meritorious, since he assured her they arose from his extreme affection, which filled him with terrors on the least prospect of losing her. Should Lady Sheerness, he urged, reject his proposal, she might then be extremely offended with their marrying, after they knew her disapprobation; but if they did it without her knowledge, she would not have room to complain of downright disobedience, and if it was displeasing to her, yet being done, and past remedy, she would be inclined to make the best of what was unavoidable, and forgive what she could not prevent.
These arguments were sufficiently solid for a girl of sixteen who never thought before and could scarcely be said to do so then. Lady Mary complied with his plan, and the day was fixed when they were to take this lively step; their several stages settled, and many more arts and contrivances to avoid discovery concerted, than they were likely to have any occasion for; but in that variety of little schemes and romantic expedients her chief pleasure in this intended marriage consisted.
The day before that on which Lady Mary and her lover were to set out for Scotland, she was airing with Lady Sheerness when one of the horses taking fright, they were overturned down a very steep declivity. Lady Sheerness was but very little hurt, but Lady Mary was extremely bruised; one side of her face received a blow which swelled it so violently that her eye was quite closed, and her body was all over contusions. She was taken up senseless, entirely stunned by the shock. As soon as she was carried home, she was put to bed; a fever ensued, and she lay a fortnight in a deplorable condition, though her life was not thought to be in danger. Her pain, for the greatest part of that time, was too acute to suffer her to reflect much on the different manner in which she had intended to employ that period; and when her mind became more at liberty, her disappointment did not sit too heavy on her spirits; for as her heart was not really touched, she considered the delay which this ill-timed accident had occasioned without any great concern, and rather pleased herself with thinking that she should give an uncommon proof of spirit, in undertaking a long journey, so soon after she was recovered from a very evident proof that travelling is not free from danger. As she had during this confinement more time to think than all her life had yet afforded her, a doubt would sometimes occur, whether she did right in entering into such an engagement without the consent of her aunt, to whom she was much obliged. But these scruples soon vanished, and she wondered how such odd notions came into her head, never having heard the word duty used, but to ridicule somebody who made it the rule of their conduct. By all she had been able to observe, pleasure was the only aim of persons of genius, whose thoughts never wandered but from one amusement to another, and, 'why should not she be guided by inclination as well as other people?' That one question decided the point, and all doubts were banished.
Before the blackness which succeeded the swelling was worn off her face, and consequently before she could appear abroad, a young lady of her acquaintance, who, out of charity, relinquished the diversions of the place to sit an afternoon with Lady Mary, told her as a whimsical piece of news she had just heard (and to tell which was the real motive for her kind visit, having long felt a secret envy of Lady Mary) that, her lover, Mr Lenman, had been married some years, to a young lady of small fortune, whom he treated on that account with so little ceremony that for a considerable time he did not own his marriage, and since he acknowledged it had kept her constantly at his house in Wales.
This was indeed news of consequence to Lady Mary, but she was little inclined to believe it and enquired what proof there was of this fact. The young lady replied that she had it from a relation of hers lately arrived at Scarborough who having been often in Mr Lenman's neighbourhood, was well acquainted both with him and his wife, and had in a pretty large company where she was present asked him after Mrs Lenman's health, to which he made as short an answer as he could, but such as shewed there was such a person, and his confusion on this question made her relation enquire what could be the meaning of it, which all the company could easily explain.
Lady Mary was prodigiously disconcerted with this intelligence; her informer imagined the visible agitation of her spirits proceeded from her attachment to Mr Lenman, but in reality it was the effect of terror. She was frighted to think how near she was becoming the object of general ridicule and disgrace, wedded to a married man and duped by his cunning; for she immediately perceived why her aunt was not to be let into the secret. How contemptible a figure must she afterwards have made in the world! There was something in this action of Mr Lenman's very uncommon, fashionable vices and follies had in her opinion received a sanction from custom, but this was of a different and a deeper dye; and little as she had been used to reflect on good and evil in any other light than as pleasant and unpleasant, she conceived a horror at this action.
After her visitor departed, she began to reflect on the luckiness of the overturn which had obstructed her rash design, and admiring her good fortune, would certainly have offered rich sacrifices on the shrine of Chance had there been a temple there erected to that deity.
While her mind was filled with these impressions, the nurse, who had attended her in her sickness, and was not yet dismissed, entered the room crying with joy and told her, that she had just received the news of the ship's being lost wherein her son was to have embarked, had he not been seized with a fit of sickness two days before it set sail, which made it impossible for him to go on board. The poor woman was profuse in her acknowledgements for God's great mercy, who had by this means prevented the destruction of her dear child. 'To be sure,' added she, 'I shall never again repine at any thing that happens to me. How vexed I was at this disappointment, and thought myself the most unfortunate creature in the world because my son missed of such a good post as he was to have had in this ship; I was continually fretting about it and fancied that so bad a setting out was a sign the poor boy would be unlucky all his life. How different things turn out from what we expect! Had not this misfortune, as I thought it, happened, he would now have been at the bottom of the sea, and my poor heart would have been broken. Well, to be sure God is very kind! I hope my boy will always be thankful for this providence and love the Lord who has thus preserved him.'
This poor woman spoke a new language to Lady Mary. She knew, indeed, that God had made the world, and had sent her into it, but she had never thought of his taking any further care about her. She had heard that he had forbidden murder and stealing and adultery and that, after death, he would judge people for those crimes, and this she supposed was the utmost extent of his attention. But the joy she felt for her own deliverance from a misfortune into which she was so near involving herself, and the resemblance there was in the means of her preservation to that for which her nurse was so thankful, communicated to her some of the same sensations, and she felt a gratitude to him who, she imagined, might possibly be more careful over his creatures than she had ever yet supposed.