A Shocking Proposal About Inheritance — Evelina, Or, the History of a Young Lady's Entrance into the World

Evelina writes from Howard Grove in the greatest uneasiness. After hours with letters from London, Madame Duval sends for her near tea-time, looking satisfied, and promises news the girl has no notion of. The preface is a scolding dressed as hope: a poor country creature who ought to be a fine lady, immured, not to blame, and now to be made another person. Then the plan. Duval intends to prove the birthright and claim, by law, the inheritance of Evelina's real family. Evelina hears it in a silence she cannot break. Duval talks of grandeur, of despising almost everybody already seen, of a marriage into the first rank, of a few months in Paris for a last polish, and of the pleasure of mortifying people who have slighted them.

Tea interrupts, and Duval is determined the scheme shall be public. They will soon call the girl by another name than Anville, and yet she is not about to have the child married. Evelina tries to leave. Lady Howard asks that the news wait. Duval will not, so they let Evelina go. Miss Mirvan reports the rest. Duval had sounded as if the plan were her own good fortune, then betrayed that the Branghtons put it into the day's letters. She will have no roundabout ways. She will go openly to law to prove birth, real name, and title to the estate. The Captain opposes the plan without asking what it is, only because Duval proposed it, and they battle with great violence. Mrs. Mirvan will not even think until she hears Villars. Lady Howard, to Evelina's surprise, approves, and will write her reasons herself. Maria hopes and fears only as Evelina does.

Evelina does not know what to wish. She has one parent, and from that one she is banished, and she has also felt that the separation was right. A father who never enquires after health, welfare, or even life still wounds her. Villars has kept the loss from feeling like a loss. She cannot think of the father and stay unwounded. She asks Villars to think for her, and to let a doubting mind be guided by his counsel.