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As soon as the thing was settled, when it was a matter past doubt that all the Lovels were to sanction the marriage, the two aunts went to work heartily. Another Lovel girl, hardly more than seen before by any of the family, was gathered to the Lovel home as a third bridesmaid, and for the fourth, who should officiate, but the eldest daughter of Lady Fitzwarren?
All the world knows it. It has been in the newspapers." "Any one wishing to oblige me will not mention it," said the Earl. This was too bad. It could not be possible, for the honour of all the Lovels it could not surely be possible, that Lord Lovel was still seeking the hand of a young woman who had confessed that she was engaged to marry a journeyman tailor!
You have already said that you would not accept her hand if you did not believe that you had her heart also, and the sentiment did you honour. Think of her condition, and be generous to her." "Generous to her! You mean generous to Lady Lovel, generous to Lord Lovel, generous to all the Lovels except her. It seems to me that all the generosity is to be on one side." "By no means.
But there was a doubt on her own mind whether it would not be dispelled without any effort on her part. It would vanish at once if he were to greet her as the Lovels had greeted her on her first coming. She could partly understand that the manner of their meeting in London had thrust upon him a necessity for flattering tenderness with which he might well dispense when he met her among his family.
The Earl, however, has not been altogether overlooked, and there is some comfort in that. I dare say Mr. Thwaite may be a good sort of man, though he is not just what the family could have wished." These words were undoubtedly spoken by her ladyship with much pleasure. The Fitzwarrens were poor, and the Lovels were all rich.
But he was a thoroughly humane and charitable man, whose good qualities were as little intelligible to old Thomas Thwaite, as were those of Thomas Thwaite to him. To whom should the Solicitor-General first break the matter? He had already had some intercourse with the Lovels, and had not been impressed with a sense of the parson's wisdom.
By the middle of June all the Lovels were again in London, the parson, his sister, the parson's wife, and the Earl. "I never saw the young woman in my life," said the Earl to his aunt. "As for that," said his aunt, "no doubt you could see her if you thought it wise to do so." "I suppose she might be asked to the rectory?" said Mrs. Lovel. "That would be giving up altogether," said the rector.
The Serjeant had become somewhat tired of the Lovels, and did not care to give any strong advice either in one direction or in the other. The young lady, he said, might of course do what she liked with her own when it was her own; but he thought that she should not be hurried.
Hitherto he had not even made an effort to see her since she had left the house in which he himself lived. She had nothing to fear from him. She had been sojourning among those Lovels, who would doubtless have made the way to deceit and luxury easy for her. He could not doubt but that she had been solicited to enter into this alliance.
The rector of Yoxham groaned when the proposition was made to him. What infinite vexation of spirit and degradation had come to him from these spurious Lovels during the last twelve months!