Part 16 (1/2)
”Yes.”
”And have you been very ill? You look ill.”
”I am better now, dearest.”
”Dearest! Don't call me names. How dare you keep speaking to me when I request you not?”
”But I can't excuse myself, and obtain my pardon, and recover your love, unless I am allowed to speak.”
”Oh, you can speak to my aunt Molineux, and she will read you a fine lesson.”
”Where is she?”
”n.o.body knows. But there is her house, the one with the iron gate. Get her ear first, if you really love me; and don't you ever waylay me again. If you do, I shall say something rude to you, sir. Oh, I'm so happy!”
Having let this out, she hid her face with her hands, and fled like the very wind.
At dinner-time she was in high spirits.
The admiral congratulated her.
”Brava, Bell! Youth and health and a foreign air will soon cure you of that folly.”
Bella blushed deeply, and said nothing. The truth struggled within her, too, but she shrank from giving pain, and receiving expostulation.
She kept the house, though, for two days, partly out of modesty, partly out of an honest and pious desire to obey her father as much as she could.
The third day Mrs. Molineux arrived, and sent over to the admiral.
He invited Bella to come with him. She consented eagerly, but was so long in dressing that he threatened to go without her. She implored him not to do that; and after a monstrous delay, the motive of which the reader may perhaps divine, father and daughter called on Mrs. Molineux.
She received them very affectionately. But when the admiral, with some hesitation, began to enter on the great subject, she said, quietly, ”Bella, my dear, go for a walk, and come back to me in half an hour.”
”Aunt Molineux!” said Bella, extending both her hands imploringly to that lady.
Mrs. Molineux was proof against this blandishment, and Bella had to go.
When she was gone, this lady, who both as wife and mother was literally a model, rather astonished her brother the admiral. She said: ”I am sorry to tell you that you have conducted this matter with perfect impropriety, both you and Bella. She had no business to show you that anonymous letter; and when she did show it you, you should have taken it from her, and told her not to believe a word of it.”
”And married my daughter to a libertine! Why, Charlotte, I am ashamed of you.”
Mrs. Molineux colored high; but she kept her temper, and ignored the interruption. ”Then, if you decided to go into so indelicate a question at all (and really you were not bound to do so on anonymous information), why, then, you should have sent for Sir Charles, and given him the letter, and put him on his honor to tell you the truth.
He would have told you the fact, instead of a garbled version; and the fact is that before he knew Bella he had a connection, which he prepared to dissolve, on terms very honorable to himself, as soon as he engaged himself to your daughter. What is there in that? Why, it is common, universal, among men of fas.h.i.+on. I am so vexed it ever came to Bella's knowledge: really it is dreadful to me, as a mother, that such a thing should have been discussed before that child. Complete innocence means complete ignorance; and that is how all my girls went to their husbands. However, what we must do now is to tell her Sir Charles has satisfied me he was not to blame; and after that the subject must never be recurred to. Sir Charles has promised me never to mention it, and no more shall Bella. And now, my dear John, let me congratulate you. Your daughter has a high-minded lover, who adores her, with a fine estate: he has been crying to me, poor fellow, as men will to a woman of my age; and if you have any respect for my judgment--ask him to dinner.”
She added that it might be as well if, after dinner, he were to take a little nap.