Those who had such expectations, however, were long disappointed, for, during the whole of the following morning, Mr. Burrel never set foot beyond his door; and it was near four o'clock when his servant, on horseback, proceeded toward Mrs. Darlington's, with a small traveling portmanteau, thus giving notice that the master himself was soon to follow. About half-past four, or a quarter to five, a groom appeared at the door with a splendid dark bay horse, and a moment after, Burrel himself came forth, looked at the girths, the stirrups, and the curb, and then putting his foot in the stirrup, swung himself easily into the saddle. The horse stood as still as marble till it felt its master's heel, and then, as if cut out of one piece, away went both--without the slightest regard to high-road--straight across the country toward Mrs. Darlington's house, which was seen crowning the distant hill.
"Happy Mrs. Darlington!"--thought the ladies of Emberton, as they gazed out, and saw the horseman clear the fence at a bound, and then canter lightly over the sloping fields that led away toward her dwelling. "Happy Mrs. Darlington!" and Mrs. Darlington was a happy woman; but as there are at least a thousand ways, in this intellectual world, of being happy, we shall take leave to give a slight sketch of _Mrs. Darlington's way_.
Mrs. Darlington was a widow, and her happiness was farther increased by being a widow with a large fortune. Nor was her fortune alone derived from her ci-devant husband, for she had passed through all the three stages of female felicity--that of co-heiress, heiress, and rich widow, with a very slight taste of the necessary purgatory preceding the last happy climax. Who was her father, matters not to this book; he was dead, and his ancestors had him in the dust--for, as the Spectator says, "He had ancestors just as well as you and I, if he could but have told their names." This, however, it was supposed, from some defect in the family memory, he could not do; but in regard to his daughter, who was neither very handsome, nor very ugly, the defect was soon remedied. She had every sort of instruction that the known world could produce; her father luckily died early; she had no relations to make her vulgar; she married Mr. Darlington, a man of rank and station--easily acquired the slang and ease of fashionable life; and adopted boldly, and without remorse of conscience, the whole of her husband's relations. Her husband found that his wife brought him fortune, good luck, and no family. His affairs, to use the seaman's term, righted, and after four years' marriage, he died, leaving her, out of pure gratitude, widowhood, fortune, and his relations.
Mrs. Darlington, having penetrated into the arcana, and got all she wanted--an introduction and a station in society--determined to taste no more of matrimony herself; though with laudable zeal she was ever willing to promote it among her friends and neighbors. She was naturally somewhat of a sentimental turn, but mingled and kept down by so sufficient a portion of small sensualities--I mean the eating, and drinking, and soft lying, and, in short, the comfortable sensualities, nothing worse--that the sentimentality never became vulgar or troublesome. Nay, indeed, I might say, it never became apparent, and showed itself rather as a convenient sort of tender consideration for the wishes and feelings of young people of suitable ages and descriptions, and likely to fall in love with each other, than as any thing personal. In most other things, she was one of those very ordinary persons, perfectly ladylike and at their ease, with a small degree of taste in the fine arts--drew tolerably, liked music, and would sometimes play on the piano--was fond of fine scenery--spoke French well, with the exception of a slight confusion in the genders--had an idea or two of Italian, and had sketched the Colosseum. Added to all these high qualities, she was extremely good-natured, very fond of her friends, and of herself; quiet, in no degree obtrusive, with a sufficient share of vanity never to fancy herself neglected, and yet not enough to run against the vanity of any one. A little tiresome she was, it is true, from a potent mixture of insipidity; but who is there so splenetic as not to forgive the only evil quality over which one can fall sound asleep and wake without a headache?
Mrs. Darlington's common course of life was to travel during six months of the year, accompanied by as many young marriageable friends as she thought might do credit to her taste and kindness; and as she had a very extensive circle of acquaintances, at whose dwellings she was always welcome, these journeys were generally pleasant, and sometimes fortunate. Of the other six months, two were spent in London, where Mrs. Darlington, dressed by Carson, in a manner at once the most splendid and the most becoming her age, figured at dinner and evening parties, and was exceedingly useful, both as a chaperon and a fill-up; while the other four months were passed at her estate near Emberton, with a house seldom entirely vacant, and dinner-parties renowned for the delicacy of the _manger_.
Such was the lady to whose house Henry Burrel, Esq., had received an invitation, solely upon the strength of the gossip of the village, and a vague report, that Captain Delaware had met him at the Earl of Ashborough's. The fact indeed was, that Mrs. Darlington's house was completely vacant at the time, or she might have felt some scruples as to asking a stranger, without some farther information regarding his station in society than could be derived from the panegyric of the doctor, whose knowledge of him went no farther than the cut of his coat. She did, indeed, feel a little apprehensive after she had dispatched the invitation, but the appearance of Burrel's servant, who brought her his reply, the form of the note that contained it, and the very handwriting, all convinced her that Henry Burrel must be a gentleman, though it was in vain that she racked her imagination to find out which of all the Burrels it could be.
When, about half-past four, Mr. Burrel's servant arrived, and proceeded to prepare the room assigned to his master, with a sort of ceremonious accuracy which argued the constant habit and custom of ease and care, the footman, feeling for the anxiety of his mistress--for footmen and ladies' maids know every thing--communicated to Mrs. Hawkins, his mistress's maid, the result of his own observations; and Mrs. Darlington sat down, with a composed mind, to finish a sketch of the west shrubbery walk, till Mr. Burrel should arrive; while of the rest of the guests she had invited, some had not appeared, and some had retired to dress.
At length her eye caught, from the window, the apparition of some person on horseback approaching the house, and in a few minutes Mr. Burrel was announced. Graceful, easy, _posé_, Burrel's whole appearance carried its own recommendation with it. He was one of those men who, in speaking little, say much, and in a very few minutes he was in high favor with Mrs. Darlington.
It now became necessary for him to dress, as he well knew that a lady whose fondness for the good things of this life was so admitted as Mrs. Darlington's world not brook the spoiling of her dinner; and accordingly he rang, and was shown to his room. His toilet, indeed, was not very long; and a few minutes after six, the hour named, found him entering the drawing-room.
There were four persons already assembled, of whom Mrs. Darlington herself was one. The face of the young lady who sat by her on the sofa was, he thought, familiar to him; but it cost him more than one glance, ere he recognized in the beautiful girl he now beheld, and who was certainly as lovely a thing as ever the female part of creation produced--it is saying a great deal, but it is true, nevertheless--it required more than one glance, I say, before he recognized in her the lady he had seen hanging upon the arm of Captain Delaware on the preceding day.