I trust I can keep Liverpool from panicking this weekend and throwing everything over.”

Lady Delingpole sighed. “Heigh-ho! Meanwhile, an insufferably tedious weekend for me, attempting to make conversation with Louisa, talking only of servants, and greenhouses, and needlepoint, while you plan the fate of the world with Castlereagh and Liverpool!” She glanced across, and saw that her husband looked unusually preoccupied and tired, and was in no spirits for their usual banter. “But never mind, my dear. She is a lovely, well-disposed creature. I shall be sure to convey to her the thanks of a grateful nation, and tell her how indispensable dear Lord Liverpool is, and so on.”

To her surprise, her husband took her hand and lifted it to his lips. “The nation may not know all that you have done, and continue to do, on its behalf, Imogen, but I do, and I am very grateful.” Lord Delingpole leaned back again and closed his eyes.

“Nor does England know all that you have done, David. Nursery maids frighten naughty children with ‘Boneypart will get you,’ but it is you the children should thank, for keeping despotism from our shores. You are not only holding the government together, you are holding everything together. I shudder to think what would happen to this kingdom if you stepped away because of the opprobrium, the slander, the lies, heaped on your head. So much depends upon you, my dear!”

“Imogen,” said Lord Delingpole, with his eyes still closed. “I do not tell you this nearly so often as I ought. Of all of the blessings in my life, you are the brightest and the best. You do know, I trust, that there has never been another? Not since the day your father put your hand in mine.”

“Ssssh, now dear. Get some rest. I will awaken you before we arrive.”

*    *    *    *    *    *    *

When something intolerable is shown to be inevitable, we must find the fortitude to endure it, and so Julia and William made for Portsmouth with Aunt Norris.

Aunt Norris’s habits of frugality made laying out funds for a journey exceedingly painful for her. As William and Julia were to discover, she tended to view the entire world and everyone in it—coachmen and innkeepers in particular—as being in a confederacy to defraud her, a desolate old widow, of the few coins she still possessed. The fact that it was William, not she, who paid for the coach, tipped the porters, and bought the dinners and the lodgings, failed to extinguish her zeal for detecting lazy service and sharp dealings. Happily, her complaints and suspicions served to vary her conversation, which otherwise alternated between lamentations over poor, ill-used Mr. Meriwether, and the reckless folly of marrying a naval officer in time of war.

Mrs. Norris’s regrets over poor, ill-used Mr. Merriwether were borne submissively by Julia, at least, for she agreed with her aunt that she had behaved wrongly by him, and the long and penitential letter she wrote to him before leaving for Portsmouth, had done little to assuage her conscience there.

But a most unexpected benefit, a handsome compensation, awaited Julia and William in Portsmouth: Julia had been dreading encountering William’s mother, but much of Mrs. Price’s resistance melted away when she understood that her sister Norris was also opposed to the match—but for dear Julia’s sake! Mrs. Price’s resentment, her wounded pride on behalf of her son William, and her habit of routine opposition to anything her older sister said, caused her to almost receive Julia with civility.

Susan and Betsey were enraptured by the news, and even Charles was not insensible of the beauty and charms of his brother’s betrothed.

For Mr. Price, the dual announcement of betrothal and promotion was of course an occasion for uncorking a bottle—at the dinner table, and another after dinner, and then, taking his bottle with him, he visited his friends, up and down the street, but not before making several coarse remarks and jests, which embarrassed Julia exceedingly.

He was still in high good spirits the following day; the staunchest advocate of the match, proud that his son should be marrying the beautiful daughter of a baronet, and entirely sanguine about their future prosperity.

“You knew that he would marry one day, Frances,” he reasoned with his wife over a hearty breakfast, when William had already gone out to visit his beloved at the Crown. “A lad like that. It can’t be helped, can it? A young man sees a beautiful girl with a face like sunshine, dancing and laughing at an assembly, let’s say, and he thinks to himself, ‘that girl, right there, if I could choose a wife out of all the girls in the world, she would be the one I’d choose,’ can you blame him for wanting her? And if he was lucky enough to win her and take her home—Frances, you haven’t forgotten it all, have you? No, I’m sure you haven’t, however so long ago it was. Now, give us a smile, my good old wife, and let’s hurry up to the chapel and tell the parson to read the banns this Sunday.”

*    *    *    *    *    *    *

William Gibson allowed almost a full week to elapse before sending a message, asking to call upon Miss Price. The reply was from Mrs. Butters, affirming that she and Miss Price would be pleased to receive him on Saturday afternoon, and so he hired a cab and made the trip to Stoke Newington, in a fairly high degree of nervous excitement.

The speech he had prepared was overlong, he feared. Fanny wanted a proposal, not an oration, surely. But between his enumeration of her charms and virtues, and his own predictions for their perfect happiness, and his judicious forestalling of all of the objections which any rational person could foresee to the match, he had a pretty long speech composed in his head, and was running over it

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