When wafted to blest realms on high, Where pain and sorrow come not nigh; May thus a contrite Christian die!
It had been inadvisedly reported that our early acquaintance, Captain Heaviside, had fallen _cum multis aliis ignotis_, at the battle of the Boyne. However, the last accounts from the pump-room at Bath put it beyond all dispute that the gallant captain was still in the land of the living; and whether at the card-table or in the ball-room, the ladies actually considered Captain Heaviside as the very cream of gentility, and the flower of ceremony; and he very soon set his affections on a prudent spinster, who had arrived at a discreet age, a Miss Barbara Golightly. And the mutual attentions of these worthies to each other, reminded the gossipers in the pump-room of the deep affection which Cid Hamet records to have existed betwixt those sage personages, Sancho and Dapple; of whom it was difficult to pronounce whether Sancho loved Dapple, or Dapple loved Sancho, the best!--_Sic itur ad astra_!
The arrival some weeks after of "The London Intelligencer"[16] set this matter completely at rest, and plainly told the _quid-nuncs_ their _erratum_, that for "killed" they ought to have read "married." The paragraph in the Intelligencer was worded to the following effect:--"Married, at the Abbey church of Bath, on Thursday last, by the Honourable and very Reverend Dean P--l--y, Captain Harry Heaviside, late of the---- regiment of foot, to the amiable and affable Miss Barbara Golightly of that city, whose merits will not be diminished by bestowing upon the brave captain, in conjunction with her fair hand, a fortune of ten thousand pounds!"
[Footnote 16: The "Mercurius Civicus, London's Intelligencer, or Truth impartially related from thence to the Kingdom, to prevent Misinformation." This public print, with the foregoing quaint title, was first published in 1643. Printed for Thomas Bates on Snow-hill.]
Lady Lucy had several proposals of marriage made to her by persons of high rank and fortune, but she invariably refused them all; whether it was that Lady Lucy was fastidious in her choice of a companion for life, or that she preferred a state of "single blessedness" to the marriage state, we shall not aver, but simply state her amiable, and disinterested, and generous conduct, to her unhappy niece, to whom she was indeed most unremitting in her attentions; and seemed most assiduous and well pleased in dispensing those nameless acts of kindness to her niece, in thought, in deed--nay, in her very looks, a countenance beaming with goodness and philanthropy; all of which were gratefully and duly acknowledged on the part of Adelaide.