"Dear Naresby,—The appearance of this well-known hand—well known to you, my friend—will, I daresay, startle you not a little. My letter will seem to you as a communication from the dead; for it is now upwards of two long years since you either heard from me or of me. On this subject I have much to say to you, and on some others besides, but defer it until I shall have the pleasure of seeing you at Wansted—a pleasure which I hope to have in about three weeks hence—when we shall talk over old affairs, and, mayhap, some new ones. Would you believe me, Naresby, if I was to say, that the sea had ceased to ebb and flow, that the hills had become valleys, and the valleys had risen into hills; that the moon had become constant, and that the sun had forgotten to sink in the west when his daily course was run? Would you believe any or all of these things, if I were to assert them to be true? No, you wouldn't. Yet will you as readily believe them, I daresay, as that I am to be—how can I come out with the word!—to be—to be married, Naresby! Married! Yes, married. I am to be married—I repeat it slowly and solemnly—and to one of the sweetest and fairest creatures that ever the sun of heaven shone upon. 'Oh! of course,' say you. But it's true, Naresby; and, ere another month has passed away, you will yourself confess it; for ere that period has come and gone, you will have seen her with your own eyes.
"So much then for resolution, for the weakness of human nature. I thought—nay, I swore, Naresby, as you know—that I would, that I could never love again. I thought that the treachery, the heartlessness of one, one smiling deceiver, had seared my heart, and rendered it callous to all the charms and blandishments of her sex. But I have been again deceived.
"I have not, however, this time, chosen the object of my affections from the class to which—I cannot pronounce her name—that fatal name—belonged; but from one which, however inferior in point of adventitious acquirement, far surpasses it—of this experience has convinced me—in all the better qualities of the heart.
"The woman to whom I am to be married—my Rosina Adair!—is the daughter of a humble yeoman, and has thus neither birth nor fortune to boast of. But what in a wife are birth or fortune to me? Nothing, verily nothing, when their place is supplied—as in the case of my betrothed—by a heart that knows no guile; by a temper cheerful and complying; and by personal charms that would add lustre to a crown. Birth, Naresby, I do not value; and fortune I do not want.
"Well, then, Naresby, my period of seclusion is now about over, and I return again to the world. Who would have said this two years ago? If any had, I would have told them they spoke untruly—that I had abjured the world, and all its joys, for ever; and that, henceforth, William Mowbray would not be as other men. But so it is. I state the fact, and leave others to account for and moralize on it."
Such, then, was the letter which Mr Mowbray wrote to his friend, Naresby, during the interval to which we formerly alluded. Several other letters he also wrote and despatched about the same time; but the purpose of these, and to whom written, we must leave the sequel of our story to explain.
Having no further details of any interest wherewith to fill up the intervening period between the occurrence of the circumstances just related and the marriage of Rosina Adair and William Mowbray, we at once carry forward our narrative to the third day after the celebration of that event. On that day—
"Rosy, my love," said Mr Mowbray, smiling, "I have a proposal to make to you."