Wedding Plans Without the Bride — Evelina, Or, the History of a Young Lady's Entrance into the World

Selwyn returns from the Wells with ironic terror: Evelina is to marry Orville next week, a decision taken while she was absent. Sir John, eager to quiet scandal, wants both daughters married at once; Macartney will take Polly Green while Evelina becomes Lady Orville and quits Beaumont's house before the false heiress is publicly degraded. Evelina protests the lack of consultation, Villars's counsel, and even Orville's participation, learning that Selwyn summoned Orville to the negotiation and that settlements of thirty thousand pounds are already imagined. Orville that evening pleads the practical reasons for speed and names Tuesday; Evelina wins only a compromise to Thursday, a month at Berry Hill afterward, and permission to write Villars, whose veto she still hopes to invoke. Grateful for Orville's love yet uneasy at her own simple facility in being hurried into compliance, she awaits her guardian's word as the one authority that may still slow this precipitate union.