The next day Adeline, out of the money which she had earned, discharged
her lodgings; and having written a farewell note to Mrs Beauclerc,
begging to hear of her now and then, she and the mulatto proceeded to
town, with Berrendale, in search of apartments; and having procured
them, Adeline began to consider by what means, till she could resolve to
marry Berrendale, she should help to maintain herself, and also contrive
to increase their income if she became his wife.
The success which she had met with in instructing children, led her
to believe that she might succeed in writing little hymns and tales
for their benefit; a method of getting money which she looked upon to
be more rapid and more lucrative than working plain or fancy works:
and, in a short time, a little volume was ready to be offered to a
bookseller:--nor was it offered in vain. Glenmurray's bookseller
accepted it; and the sum which he gave, though trifling, imparted a
balsam to the wounded mind of Adeline: it seemed to open to her the path
of independence; and to give her, in spite of her past errors, the means
of serving her fellow-creatures.
But month after month elapsed, and Glenmurray had been dead two years,
yet still Adeline could not prevail on herself to fix a time for her
marriage.
But next to the aversion she felt to marrying at all, was that which
she experienced at the idea of having no fortune to bestow on the
disinterested Berrendale; and so desirous was she of his acquiring
some little property by his union with her, that she resolved to ask
counsel's opinion on the possibility of her claiming a sum of money
which Glenmurray had bequeathed to her, but without, as Berrendale had
assured her, the customary formalities.
The money was near £300; but Berrendale had allowed it to go to
Glenmurray's legal heir, because he was sure that the writing which
bequeathed it would not hold good in law. Still Adeline was so unwilling
to be under so many pecuniary obligations to a man whom she did not
love, that she resolved to take advice on the subject, much against the
will of Berrendale, who thought the money for fees might as well be
saved; but as a chance for saving the fee he resolved to let Adeline go
to the lawyer's chambers alone, thinking it likely that no fee would be
accepted from so fine a woman. Accordingly, more alive to economy than
to delicacy or decorum, Berrendale, when Adeline, desiring a coach to be
called, summoned him to accompany her to the Temple, pleaded terror of
an impending fit of the gout, and begged her to excuse his attendance;
and Adeline, unsuspicious of the real cause of his refusal, kindly
expressing her sorrow for the one he feigned, took the counsellor's
address, and got into the coach, Berrendale taking care to tell her, as
she got in, that the fare was but a shilling.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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