A change so sudden portended danger. I looked to my wife, whose
grave countenance afforded me no explanation. I looked to the lady
herself, my own countenance no doubt sufficiently expressive of the
wonder which I felt, but there was little to be read in that quarter
which could give me any clue to the mystery. Yet she chattered like
a magpie; her conversation running on certain styles of dress,
various purchases of silks, and satins, and other stuffs, which
she had been buying--a budget of which, I afterward discovered,
she had brought with her, in order to display to her daughter.
Then she spoke of her teeth, newly filed and plugged, and grinned
with frequent effort, that their improved condition might be made
apparent. Her chatter was peculiarly that of a flippant and conceited
girl-child of sixteen, whose head has been turned by premature
bringing out, and the tuition of some vain, silly, wriggling mother.
I could see, by my wife's looks, that there was a cause for all
this, and waited, with considerable apprehension, for the moment
when we should be alone, in order to receive from her an explanation.
But little of Mrs. Clifford's conversation was addressed to me,
though that little was evidently meant to be particularly civil.
But, a little before she took her departure, which was soon after
dinner, she asked me with some abruptness, though with a considerable
smirk of meaning in her face, if I "knew a Mr. Patrick Delaney."
I frankly admitted that I had not this pleasure; and with a still
more significant smirk, ending in a very affected simper, meant
to be very pleasant, she informed me, as she took her leave, that
Julia would make me wiser. I looked to Julia when she was gone,
and, with some chagrin, and with few words, she unravelled the
difficulty. Her mother--the old fool--was about to be married, and
to a Mr. Patrick Delaney, an Irish gentleman, fresh from the green
island, who had only been some eighteen months in America.
"You seem annoyed by this affair, Julia; but how does it affect
you?"
"Oh, such a match can not turn out well. This Mr. Delaney is a young
man, only twenty-five, and what can he see in mother to induce him
to marry her? It can only be for the little pittance of property
which she possesses."
I shrugged my shoulders while replying:-"There must be some consideration in every marriage-contract."
"Ah! but, Edward, what sort of a man can it be to whom money is
the consideration for marrying a woman old enough to be his mother?"
"And so little money, too. But, Julia, perhaps he marries her as a
mother. He is a modest youth, who knows his juvenility, and seeks
becoming guardianship. But the thing does not concern us at all."