The Quiet Gentleman

“Well,” said Mrs. Morville reasonably, “I have a great regard for Henry Poundsbridge, and I own I should not have opposed the connection; for Drusilla, you know, is not a Beauty, and when a girl has been out for three seasons it is not the time to be picking and choosing amongst her suitors. An excellent young man, but not, you will admit, to be compared with Lord St. Erth!”

“I cannot credit the evidence of my own ears!” said Mr. Morville. “How is it possible that you should talk in such a strain as this, Mrs. Morville? Is this, I ask myself, the woman who wrote The Distaff? Is this the authoress of Reflections on the Republican State? Is this the companion with whom I have shared my every philosophic thought? I am appalled!”

“So you might well be, my dear sir, if I were such a zany as to prefer Henry Poundsbridge to the Earl of St. Erth for my daughter!” responded the lady with some asperity. “It is an alliance it would not have entered my head to seek, but if the Earl — I say, if! — were to offer for dear Drusilla, and you were to refuse your permission, I should be strongly inclined to clap you into Bedlam! I marvel, my love, that a man of your intellect should so foolishly confuse theory with practice! I shall continue to hold by those opinions which I share with you, but when it comes to my only daughter’s creditable establishment in the world it is time to set aside Utopian dreams!” She perceived that her husband was looking slightly stunned by this burst of eloquence, and at once drove him against the ropes by adding in quelling accents: “As Cordelia Consett, I must deplore the present state of society; but as a Mother I must deem myself unworthy of that title were I to spurn a connection so flattering to my Child!”

“Am I to understand,” asked Mr. Morville, “that the Earl is about to make an offer for Drusilla?”

“Good gracious, my dear, how you do run on!” exclaimed his wife. “For anything I know, St. Erth has no such notion in his head! You may be sure that I was careful not to seem to be in the least conscious when I was talking to Drusilla. That would never do! Merely, I suspect that her heart may not be untouched.”

“If,” said Mr. Morville, asserting himself, “you have reason to suppose that St. Erth has been trifling with Drusilla — ”

“Nothing of the sort! From what I have learnt today, I am persuaded that he is by far too great a gentleman to raise expectations he has no intention of fulfilling. Besides, men never do trifle with Drusilla,” added Mrs. Morville, in a voice not wholly free from regret.

“It appears to me,” said her spouse, pointedly opening his book, “that you are making a piece of work about nothing, my dear!”

“We shall see! Only, if I am right, I do beg of you, my dear sir, that you will not allow a foolish scruple to stand in the way of your daughter’s happiness!”

“It would be quite against my principles to coerce Drusilla in any way. Or, indeed, any of my children!”

“Very true, and it exactly illustrates what I said to you about theory and practice! For when poor Jack fell into the clutches of that Female, and would have married her had it not been for — ”

“That,” interrupted Mr. Morville, “was a different matter!”

“Of course it was, my love, and very properly you behaved, as Jack himself would now be the first to acknowledge!”

She waited for a moment, in case he should venture on a retort, but when he became to all appearances immersed in his book she withdrew, to indulge in several delightful daydreams, not one of which could have been said to have been worthy of a lady of her intellectual distinction. She knew it, laughed at herself, and had even the grace to be ashamed of the most attractive of these dreams, in which she had the felicity of breaking the news of Drusilla’s triumph to her sister-in-law, not one of whose three pretty daughters was as yet engaged to be married.