Mr. Weston was a native of Highbury, and born of a
respectable family, which for the last two or three
generations had been rising into gentility and property.
He had received a good education, but, on succeeding
early in life to a small independence, had become
indisposed for any of the more homely pursuits in which
his brothers were engaged, and had satisfied an active,
cheerful mind and social temper by entering into the
militia of his county, then embodied.
Captain Weston was a general favourite; and when the
chances of his military life had introduced him to
Miss Churchill, of a great Yorkshire family, and Miss
Churchill fell in love with him, nobody was surprized,
except her brother and his wife, who had never seen
him, and who were full of pride and importance, which
the connexion would offend.
Miss Churchill, however, being of age, and with the
full command of her fortune—though her
fortune bore no proportion to the family-estate—was
not to be dissuaded from the marriage, and it took
place, to the infinite mortification of Mr. and Mrs.
Churchill, who threw her off with due decorum.
It was an unsuitable connexion, and did not produce
much happiness. Mrs. Weston ought to have found
more in it, for she had a husband whose warm heart
and sweet temper made him think every thing due to
her in return for the great goodness of being in love
with him; but though she had one sort of spirit, she
had not the best. She had resolution enough to
pursue her own will in spite of her brother, but not
enough to refrain from unreasonable regrets at that
brother’s unreasonable anger, nor from missing
the luxuries of her former home. They lived beyond
their income, but still it was nothing in comparison
of Enscombe: she did not cease to love her husband,
but she wanted at once to be the wife of Captain Weston,
and Miss Churchill of Enscombe.
Captain Weston, who had been considered, especially
by the Churchills, as making such an amazing match,
was proved to have much the worst of the bargain;
for when his wife died, after a three years’
marriage, he was rather a poorer man than at first,
and with a child to maintain. From the expense
of the child, however, he was soon relieved.
The boy had, with the additional softening claim of
a lingering illness of his mother’s, been the
means of a sort of reconciliation; and Mr. and Mrs.
Churchill, having no children of their own, nor any
other young creature of equal kindred to care for,
offered to take the whole charge of the little Frank
soon after her decease. Some scruples and some
reluctance the widower-father may be supposed to have
felt; but as they were overcome by other considerations,
the child was given up to the care and the wealth of
the Churchills, and he had only his own comfort to
seek, and his own situation to improve as he could.
