Then, finding how the sweet society of your dear
daughter had restored him to new life and spirit, she devised the
notable expedient of removing what she suspected to be the chief cause
of my contumacy, by marrying the poor child to him. He scouted the
idea as a preposterous and cruel sacrifice, but it presently appeared
that Colonel Mar was ready to find her a debauched old lieutenant who
would gladly marry--what do I say?--it profanes the word--but accept
the young lady for a couple of hundred pounds. Then did I implore my
uncle to seem to yield, and permit me to personate him at the ceremony.
Our names being the same, and all being done in private and in the
dark, the whole was quite possible, and it seemed the only means of
saving her from a terrible fate."
"He might--or you might, have remembered that she had a father!" said
the Major.
"True. But you were at a distance, and my mother's displeasure
against you was to be deprecated."
"I had rather she had been offended fifty times than have had such
practices with my poor little girl!" said Major Delavie. "No wonder
the proposals struck me as strange and ambiguous. Whose writing was
it?"
"Mine, at his dictation," said the youth. "He was unwilling, but my
importunity was backed by my mother's threats, conveyed through
Hargrave, that unless Aurelia became his wife she should be disposed
of otherwise, and that his sanity might be inquired into.
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