University of Virginia Library

14. CHAPTER XIV.

When I returned home during the vacation,
which succeeded the events just related, I found
Mr. Sandford completely domesticated at my
father's house; and what appeared still more
strange to me, there appeared to be some subject
of secret conference, but of primary and engrossing
interest, between this comparative stranger
and my father: whatever it might be, it was studiously
concealed from the rest of the family.

This course was so different from my father's
usually confidential and unrestrained intercourse
with his own family, that it excited my surprise;
but in no way shook my confidence in him or his
new friend. My curiosity was excited to find out
the subject of these long and secret conferences.
It was not that restless, feverish, morbid curiosity
with which our sex is so generally charged; but
one partly founded upon selfish feelings, and partly
proceeding from a laudable anxiety for the welfare
of us all.

But to proceed with my story; I found Mr.
Sandford, under my father's calm, penetrating eye,
a gentleman more to my taste than I had before
seen him. He had doffed much of the city gallant,
that had been visible when I last saw him; yet was

still far from a plain, unaffected country gentleman;
and he suffered no opportunity of displaying
himself to escape. Yet he was not disgustingly
ostentatious, for there was much good taste in
every thing he did; his errors lay in the motives,
and not in the manner of his actions. This combination
of good sense, taste, and fine education,
without principles, is perhaps one of the most dangerous
assailants to female happiness which it has
ever been my misfortune to contemplate. Almost
every one of my sex would do as I did; look to
the effects, not to the secret motives—to the actions,
not the principles—and to the accomplishments,
rather than the morals of a suitor.

Mr. Sandford took an early opportunity to show
me that his acquisitions were not confined to the
classical refinements of the school. He seemed to
have studied mankind in the true spirit of Chester-field,
and to have devoted much time to the cultivation
of the lighter personal accomplishments.
When we all felt ourselves a little accustomed to
our new state of society at home, he began gradually
to unfold these stores in reserve; and I found
that he danced, and sang, and performed on several
musical instruments with taste and skill. These
graces were, of course, exhibited by the accident
of design, and with the most refined nonchalance;
seeming rather to despise them as trifles, and yet
to think no gentleman could do without them.
As I was seated, one day, upon the green, in the
grove behind the mansion-house at H—, he suddenly

made his appearance; and seizing my hand,
avowed himself my most ardent and enthusiastic
admirer. I mention this circumstance because the
first seeds of a suspicion, that much of it was lip-service,
were at this time first sown; not that I
threw his hand from me and turned away in disgust;
for the suspicion of which I speak was
scarcely known at that time to myself. If I had
taken myself to account, I might, indeed, have
found it; but it was one of those singular impressions
which spring up in the mind nearly unobserved,
and yet influence every action of importance;
first, scarcely operating on the conduct at
all, but in the end affecting it decidedly. This produces
a reaction, then the opposite state of unsuspiciousness,
and so on, from one extreme to the
other, until the mind becomes settled in permanent
confidence or distrust.

At the time alluded to, this suspicion was nothing
more than a flash across the mental vision, and in
nowise operated upon my conduct; for to tell the
truth, I was still under the dominion of those same
girlish feelings with which I had first seen Mr.
Sandford; and I suppose that the pleasure of the
avowal was but too visible in my countenance, for
when we had concluded our interview, which it is
not necessary to describe more particularly, he
was referred to my father. As I had expected,
my father had but one objection—my age. He
gave his consent readily, provided Mr. Sandford
would wait until I had spent one more year at

school; this was also in accordance with my feelings,
for I could not bear even then to contemplate
marriage immediately before me. Not so my
suitor; he became urgent with my father, and absolutely
tiresome to me, with eternally harping
upon the same subject, and that too after the most
unanswerable reasons had been assigned by the
family, and reiterated by me.

As I was sitting one night, while matters were
in this state, in a little arbour in a secluded corner
of our garden, from which there was but one way
of egress, two persons approached and seated
themselves on a bench immediately outside of the
entrance. It was about nine o'clock on a dark
night, and the distance to the house so great that
the inmates could not have heard me if I had called
with all the power of my voice. Under these circumstances,
I sat trembling, while the two (men
they seemed to be) began a conversation in an
under tone of voice. I instantly concluded one of
them to be Mr. Sandford, and was soon confirmed
in that opinion, by ascertaining the subject of their
conversation to be the postponing of the marriage.
His companion seemed to be deeply chagrined,
and honoured me with several not very flattering
epithets, such as minx, obstinate, and provoking
devil; and I often, during the interview, heard exclamations
which were not so intelligible; as, for
example, “was any thing ever so unlucky? and
yet it seems reasonable! Ah, there's the difficulty
of the case.”

I was utterly at a loss to conceive how the post-ponement
of the marriage could be so unlucky to
any other than Mr. Sandford. He was evidently
young; a year could not greatly affect his fortunes;
and as to the fortunes of any other, they
could have nothing to do with our marriage. Such
was the tenor of my reflections, as I slowly walked
towards the house after their departure, and meditated
upon the singularity of what I had seen and
heard. I could not in any way account for Mr.
Sandford's seeing this intimate of his so clandes-tinely.
“Why,” thought I, “does he not introduce
him to the family?” But the thought of there being
a propriety in my communicating the circumstance
to my father never entered my head, and I finally
almost ceased to remember it; I was nevertheless
resolved, without exactly knowing why, to delay
the marriage at least for the year stipulated.

I was now under an engagement to be married
in one year, and the period was to be spent in the
city, in the completion of my very imperfect education.
Soon afterward I took leave of my father
and mother and my affianced husband, with the
usual feelings of deep and momentary suffering
with regard to the former, but with little sensation of
any kind towards the latter; as long as the marriage
could be contemplated at the distance of a whole
year (a little lifetime in a young girl's estimation),
I was contented and thoughtlessly happy. But
this long, long year produced wonderful changes
in my views of things. Towards the end of the

time, I began to dread and tremble whenever I
contemplated the marriage immediately before me.
I had now begun to form more consistent pictures
of my own future. My imagination painted such
a husband as I could fancy, and in very different
colours from any in which I had ever seen Mr.
Sandford; the first time I compared the two beings—the
one of my imagination and the other my
real and affianced husband, was one evening when
with Isabel Hazlehurst. We were indulging our
young hearts, in building gay and dreamy castles
in the air; but the instant afterward, when my
engagement came to my recollection, I was truly
miserable. In fact, I did not love Mr. Sandford;
nay more, he was now disagreeable to me; while
I had viewed the completion of the engagement at
a distance, and had never pictured in my imagination
a rival to that gentleman, I was perfectly indifferent
on the subject; I loathed the thoughts of
the marriage, and hated Mr. Sandford because, I
suppose, he interfered with my new fancies.

After reflecting and enduring this state of mind
for some weeks, I resolved to break the subject to
Isabel Hazlehurst, and to ask her advice. Accordingly,
having given her the history of Mr. Sandford,
as far as I knew it myself, and confided to
her all my secret feelings, both past and present, I
asked her advice; such are the beginnings of female
intimacies. Isabel counselled that I should
inform Mr. Sandford, as soon as I could see him,
that I had changed my mind, or rather, that at the

time of my engagement, I was too young to have
any mind of my own on the subject; that now my
views were enlarged, and that I felt capable of
judging for myself.

To my father, who, we concluded, was very
anxious for the match, I was to write immediately,
and candidly state my views, past and present;
inform him of the interview which I had overheard
in the garden between Mr. Sandford and his unknown
friend, and earnestly beg his forgiveness
for my fickleness.

This letter I wrote immediately to my father,
and explained, or rather protested to him, at the
same time, that there was no other suitor present
or in expectation for my hand; that my change of
views was owing solely to my improved reflection
and more mature age, which, however, was
advanced only some eight or ten months,—a little
age of female experience.