“And so because a fool follows your lead you throw up your cards; you will have enough to do if you carry out that rule in all your actions. Thank you for your kind offer; but really I am neither rich nor fashionable enough to drive about town in such a Welsh butter-tub. Now, answer my second question; who is the lady;—has she been named in honor of the vehicle?”
“No, but she will probably bear the name of its inventor in due time.”
“Can it be possible, Harry? have you really determined to turn Benedict before the pleasures of freedom have palled upon your taste? Have you seriously reflected upon all you are about to relinquish? Have you thought upon the pleasant tête-à-têtes, the agreeable flirtations, the many delicious ‘love-passages’ which the admired Harry Wilford is privileged to enjoy while he roves at large, but which will hereafter be denied to him who wears the clanking fetters of matrimony?”
“I have thought of every thing, Ned; and, to tell you the truth, I am beginning to get tired of the aimless, profitless life I now lead.”
“And, therefore, you are going to turn merchant and marry; you will have a considerable amount to add to profit and loss by these experiments. Pray who is the enchantress that has woven so wondrous a spell of transformation?”
“She bears the primitive name of Rachel, and was both born and bred in the little village of Westbury, where, as I am told, a fashionably cut coat or one of Leary’s hats would be regarded as a foreign curiosity. She has never stirred beyond the precincts of her native place until this spring, when she accompanied a newly married relative to our gay city. Indeed she has been kept so strictly within the pale of her society, that if her cousin had not fortunately married out of it, the lovely Rachel would probably have walked quietly to meeting with some grave young broad-brim, and contented herself with a drab bonnet all her life.”
“So your inamorata is country bred. By Jupiter I shall begin to believe in the revival of witchcraft. Is she rich, Harry?”
“I see the drift of your question, Ned; but you are mistaken if you think I have looked on her through golden spectacles. She is an orphan with sufficient property to render her independent of relatives, but not enough to entice a fortune-hunter.”
“Well, if any one but yourself had told me that Harry Wilford, with all his advantages of purse and person, had made choice of a little rusticated Quakeress to be his bride, I could not have believed it,” said Morton; “pray do you expect this pretty Lady Gravely to preside at the exquisite dinners for which your bachelor’s establishment has long been famous? or do you intend to forego such vulgar enjoyments for the superior pleasures of playing Darby to Mrs. Wilford’s Joan in your chimney corner?”
“No quizzing, Ned,” said Wilford, smiling, “Rachel has been well educated, and the staid decorum of the sect has not destroyed her native elegance of manner.”