ABSTRACT
In consequence of Ellesmere’s approbation of his intentions, and of other circumstances that served to strengthen his resolution, D’Alonville proposed to Mrs. Denzil a plan, on her consent to which he declared the future happiness of his life depended. – This was, that Angelina should immediately be his; that without naming their marriage to Lord Aberdore, to whom it would probably be no additional recommendation that he was allied to a family to which he himself once acknowledged some relationship, he should accept the situation offered him, and endeavour, by the advantages that might accrue from it, to encrease his little income so as to support his wife, who, with her mother, her younger brothers and sisters, should take an house as near as could be conveniently found to that seat of Lord Aberdore’s, where his son, Lord Aurevalle, and the other branches of his family, were to be entrusted to their tutors. This, as it was now understood, was not the house in Staffordshire, but another much larger, and upon the most capital estate possessed by the Aberdore family; and from a decayed town near it they took their title. – It was partly in Merionethshire,26 in a country eminently romantic and beautiful, but at such a distance from London, that the present Lady Aberdore disliked residing there for any length of time, and was not always prevailed upon to accompany Lord Aberdore in his annual visit, which he usually paid his Welsh estate at or soon after Christmas; and she had now prevailed on her Lord to give it up to his children, alledging that it was the most capacious and most healthy of his seats; but as in consequence of this 413new arrangement he would have no occasion for so large a house as that in Staffordshire, she hinted, in no very equivocal terms, how prudent it would be to let that, and to confine their country excursions to their annual visit to Rock-March (the name of the seat in Wales), and to their occasional residence at Barton-Grove, a villa he had purchased since his second marriage, in the neighbourhood of Hampton Court. – To these arrangements also Lord Aberdore agreed, with that ready submission which should mark the conduct of all peaceable-disposed husbands in regard to reasonable proposals from pretty and lively wives, twenty years younger than themselves. Had the family of which D’Alonville was to become a temporary member, remained in Staffordshire, there might have been many objections to the scheme for which he so earnestly pleaded, that did not now arise; the family of Mrs. Denzil were known there, and she could not suppose that her return to a neighbourhood where she had before resided, or the motives for her return, could long remain undiscovered. – This might have destroyed at once the flattering visions in which D’Alonville had indulged himself, and involve them all in discussions which she desired particularly to avoid; but languishing, as she did, to quit scenes in and near London, where she had undergone so many years of fruitless anxiety, and hopeless misery, she felt more satisfaction than she had long been sensible of, in the idea of hiding herself in a distant province of Wales, and trying, amidst its wild and romantic scenes, to find again a relish for those rude beauties of unadulterated nature, which used in happier days to flatter her imagination, and soothe her heart.
