But this was not all. Theresa possessed beyond other women
that retiring modesty of demeanour, that unsullied purity of look
and speech, which made her sufficiently remarkable in the midst of
a licentious court, and among companions whose levity at least
equalled their loveliness. On making more particular inquiries
respecting her family connexions, I found that they were strictly
respectable, but of the middle class of life; and that she had
passed the period intervening between the death of her father,
General Marchmont, and her appointment at court, in the family of an
aged relative in the county of Devon, by whom indeed she had been
principally educated. It was at the dying instigation of this, her
last surviving friend and protector, that her destitute situation
had been represented to the king by the Lady Wriothesly, to whose
good offices she was indebted for her present honourable station.
Being however, as it were, friendless as well as dowerless, and
backed in my suit by the powerful assistance of the king's
approbation, I did not anticipate much opposition to my pretensions
to the hand of Miss Marchmont, which had now become the object of my
dearest ambition. I knew myself to be naturally formed for domestic
life; and while the disastrous position of public affairs had obliged
me to waste the days of my early youth in camps or courts, and in
exile from my own hereditary possessions, I resolved to pass the
evening of my life in the repose of a happy and well-ordered home
in my native country.
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