All these moral considerations seemed to offer a fair
security for happiness; and the material ones were neither less
promising, nor altogether disregarded by the mother. It was an union
which would join broad lands and fair estates; which would place on
the brow of her daughter one of the most ancient coronets in England;
and, which indeed was the chief of these considerations, would,
without exposing Venetia to that contaminating contact with the
world from which Lady Annabel recoiled, establish her, without this
initiatory and sorrowful experience, in a position superior to which
even the blood of the Herberts, though it might flow in so fair and
gifted a form as that of Venetia, need not aspire.
Lord Cadurcis had not returned to Cherbury a week before this scheme
entered into the head of Lady Annabel. She had always liked him; had
always given him credit for good qualities; had always believed that
his early defects were the consequence of his mother's injudicious
treatment; and that at heart he was an amiable, generous, and
trustworthy being, one who might be depended on, with a naturally good
judgment, and substantial and sufficient talents, which only required
cultivation. When she met him again after so long an interval, and
found her early prognostics so fairly, so completely fulfilled, and
watched his conduct and conversation, exhibiting alike a well-informed
mind, an obliging temper, and, what Lady Annabel valued even above all
gifts and blessings, a profound conviction of the truth of all her own
opinions, moral, political, and religious, she was quite charmed; she
was moved to unusual animation; she grew excited in his praise; his
presence delighted her; she entertained for him the warmest affection,
and reposed in him unbounded confidence.
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