But to return to Mrs. Montgomery and Mr. Jackson, they were so extravagantly partial to Edmund themselves, and had for so many years strengthened each other in the belief that there was no doubt of his being the son of a noble family; no doubt, in short, of the truth of the statements in the nurse’s letter; that they did not see the impropriety of a match between him and Lady Susan in the glaring light in which it would have been viewed by most others. They thought their inward conviction that his birth was equal to her ladyship’s, when joined with his own great merit, his amiability in private, and high standing character in public life, quite sufficient to outweigh the trifling circumstances of their never having been able to discover, exactly, who he was; and of his having no property but his captain’s pay, and his fifteen thousand pounds prize-money. What Mrs. Montgomery might have thought of all this, had the subject been brought nearer home by the knowledge that it was to Julia Edmund was attached, it is hard to say; for the best of us can seldom judge impartially when we ourselves, or those we love, are concerned. There are few mothers who do not expect their sons to marry such women as, were they their daughters, they would not give to such men as their sons. But Mrs. Montgomery was spared all alarm respecting the intimacy between her grand-daughters and adopted son, by Edmund’s supposed sudden admiration of Lady Susan, commencing on the very evening of his arrival; and the fuss, as we before observed, which every one had since made, about their mutual attachment. There was also another blind to Mrs. Montgomery’s penetration, in the marked and troublesome attentions of Henry to his cousin Julia, beside whom he was generally to be seen, while Edmund, by the contrivance of others, was dancing with or handing about Lady Susan. Mrs. Montgomery, in short, was very uneasy about it, and even lectured her nephew on the subject: for she knew how disagreeable such a thing would be to Lord L⸺. Lord Borrowdale, too, who would have been a perfectly eligible match, was equally marked in his attentions; yet it was impossible to say, which Julia preferred: she generally smiled and looked happy, and this was all that could be ascertained. The lovers the while, strange to say, had taken no alarm, if we except Edmund’s first day or two of endless fears; since which, a tacit, and, to themselves, unacknowledged conviction of each other’s affection, had grown up in the heart of each, keeping peace within in spite of all outward occurrences. The miseries of doubt, the tortures of alternate hopes and fears, were, alas! reserved for a future stage of their attachment.