Page:Precaution; a novel by Cooper, James Fenimore.djvu/283

Rh Sir Edward and Lady Moseley saw the attention of the duke with the greatest pleasure. Though not slaves to the ambition of wealth and rank, they were certainly no objections in their eyes; and a proper suitor Lady Moseley thought the most probable means of driving the recollection of Denbigh from the mind of her daughter. The latter consideration had great weight in inducing her to cultivate an acquaintance so embarrassing on many accounts.

The colonel, however, wrote to his wife the impossibility of his quitting his uncle while he continued so unwell, and it was settled that the bride should join him, under the escort of Lord William.

The same tenderness distinguished Denbigh on this occasion that had appeared so lovely when exercised to his dying father. Yet, thought Mrs. Wilson, how insufficient are good feelings to effect what can only be the result of good principles.

Caroline Harris was frequently of the parties of pleasure, walks, rides, and dinners, which the Moseleys were compelled to join in; and as the Marquis of Eltringham had given her one day some little encouragement, she determined to make an expiring effort at the peerage, before she condescended to enter into an examination of the qualities of Captain Jarvis, who, his mother had persuaded her, was an Apollo, that she had great hopes of seeing one day a lord, as both the captain and herself had commenced laying up a certain sum quarterly for the purpose of buying a title hereafter—an ingenious expedient of Jarvis's to get into his hands a portion of the allowance of his mother.

Eltringham was strongly addicted to the ridiculous; and without committing himself in the least, drew the lady out of divers occasions, for the amusement of himself and the duke—who enjoyed, without practicing, that species of joke.

The collisions between ill-concealed art and as ill-concealed irony had been practiced with impunity by the marquis for a fortnight, and the lady's imagination began to revel in the delights of a triumph, when a really respectable offer was made to Miss Harris by a neighbor of her