’The settlements, I told him, were actually drawing by Counsellor Williams, of whose eminence he must have heard—­’

He had.

’And of the truth of this he might satisfy himself before he went out of town.

’When these were drawn, approved, and engrossed, nothing, I said, but signing, and the nomination of my happy day, would be wanting.  I had a pride, I declared, in doing the highest justice to so beloved a creature, of my own voluntary motion, and without the intervention of a family from whom I had received the greatest insults.  And this being our present situation, I was contented that Mr. John Harlowe should suspend his reconciliatory purposes till our marriage were actually solemnized.’

The Captain was highly delighted with all I said:  Yet owned, that as his dear friend Mr. Harlowe had expressed himself greatly pleased to hear that we were actually married, he could have wished it had been so.  But, nevertheless, he doubted not that all would be well.

He saw my reasons, he said, and approved of them, for making the gentlewomen below [whom again he understood to be good sort of people] believe that the ceremony had passed; which so well accounted for what the lady’s maid had told Mr. Harlowe’s friend.  Mr. James Harlowe, he said, had certainly ends to answer in keeping open the breach; and as certainly had formed a design to get his sister out of my hands.  Wherefore it as much imported his worthy friend to keep this treaty as secret, as it did me; at least till he had formed his party, and taken his measures.  Ill will and passion were dreadful misrepresenters.  It was amazing to him, that animosity could be carried so high against a man capable of views so pacific and so honourable, and who had shown such a command of his temper, in this whole transaction, as I had done.  Generosity, indeed, in every case, where love of stratagem and intrigue (I would excuse him) were not concerned, was a part of my character.

He was proceeding, when, breakfast being ready, in came the empress of my heart, irradiating all around her, as with a glory—­a benignity and graciousness in her aspect, that, though natural to it, had been long banished from it.

Next to prostration lowly bowed the Captain.  O how the sweet creature smiled her approbation of him!  Reverence from one begets reverence from another.  Men are more of monkeys in imitation than they think themselves.—­Involuntarily, in a manner, I bent my knee—­My dearest life—­and made a very fine speech on presenting the Captain to her.  No title myself, to her lip or cheek, ’tis well he attempted not either.  He was indeed ready to worship her;—­could only touch her charming hand.

I have told the Captain, my dear creature—­and then I briefly repeated (as if I had supposed she had not heard it) all I had told him.

He was astonished, that any body could be displeased one moment with such an angel.  He undertook her cause as the highest degree of merit to himself.