Page:Lady Anne Granard 1.pdf/171

166 "Our happiness, and my doing credit to your recommendation, will," said he to his new friend, "be your best reward." He found both sister and brother in high good humour. A Hungarian baron, with an unpronounceable name, had that very morning been so struck with Lady Penrhyn's beauty, that, not knowing she was married, he laid himself, castle, sabre, and fur pelisses at her feet, for immediate acceptance. She told this as a good story, not considering how much it revealed of the lightness and encouragement which must have marked her conduct, before it could have happened to a married woman, and not aware of what to other tellers constituted the point of the anecdote, that the Hungarian had understood that she was not the wife, but the heiress of Lord Penrhyn. He was equally pleased after his kind; a new and rich vein of lead had been discovered in some mines which he had bought for next to nothing from an old friend who had ruined himself in the speculation. Gratified vanity and interest give their own interest to fish, flesh, and fowl: the cloth removed, and the servants withdrawn, Penrhyn thought that he could not have a better opportunity. A man is always ashamed of confessing that he is about to be married—even to an heiress—but when it comes to an attachment, and to a girl without a shilling, the avowal is very embarrassing indeed. Charles planned