Lady Charlotte Campbell Bury

“ Among these, again, was Lady Tilney, who continued still the soi-disant queen of ton, blind to the approach of that period when her empire must yield, in despite of all her strenuous efforts to uphold it, to that of some fresh rising beauty; and still insensible to the dreadful vacuum which in the decline of life, without the sincerity of friendship and the resources of a well-cultivated mind—above all, without religious trust to cheer and gild the setting sun of life—must be the miserable portion of every human creature. ”

“ Lady Hamlet Vernon seemed busy in thought, was silent for a few moments, then turned to Mr. Foley, and fixing her eyes on his, asked pointedly,
"But do you think she is fond of Lord Albert?"
"Fond! yes, perhaps so; the fondness of a child that has been told it ought to love something, and has never made any comparisons whereby to know what it likes."
"That will not do for Lord Albert D'Esterre, I am certain, and it would be madness in him to persevere in forming such a union. You, dear Mr. Foley, are intimate with her mother, Lady Dunmelraise; [14] does she ever speak to you on the subject?" ”

“ There is an ordeal to be passed through by every one. Happy are those who are purified seven times in the fire, and come forth humbled and ameliorated!
However much Lord Albert's sufferings might have been unnoticed by the general eye, there was one who read his soul's secret but too plainly. Lady Hamlet Vernon saw through the veil of the false gaiety and forced spirits which he assumed; and again and again felt, with an impassioned woman's feelings, that the hour was come which was to decide her fate. ”

“ After all, the first meeting has been, perhaps, as little trying to both as could well be; and it has, with this explanation, I hope, opened the way to a more delightful reverie still. D'Esterre, I adjure you by our friendship, by your own happiness, trust to me, trust to Georgina, and suffer not this fortunate moment to escape! Give way to the genuine impulse of your heart. Let not any false pride, any untimely fears, influence you; but empower me, this very instant, to go to Lady Dunmelraise, and prepare the way for your reception. ”

“ Fortunately, before we are tired of sorrow, sorrow tires us, so that wearied nature finds refuge in sleep despite of itself; and this was the case of Lady Adeline, whose eyes, while yet full of tears, were closed in slumber: but it is the wakening again which is the trial; then we seem to have derived fresh power to suffer, and the sad vision of grief is presented to us with renewed vitality. ”

“ And then again a quick return of reflection made her sigh; remembering how valueless the affection is, how undeserving the name, which depends alone on personal charms. But still a secret hope remained, that if she could once again attract his regards, she might find the way to retain them on a sure foundation.
As this hope, in despite of reason, took possession of her heart, it tinged her cheek with a brighter hue, and gave an animation to her whole appearance which even deceived those who loved her most. ”

“ He affected, for a moment, to be overcome with disappointment and chagrin, and then said in a low voice, "Oh, be not uneasy; there are so many things may have detained a man in his station. Why do you suffer yourself to be thus wretched? Would to Heaven he knew! If he did but know, surely, surely he would be here. But how people mistake their own happiness! Were I in his place—"
"You would be where he is," said Lady Glenmore with composure.
"Doubtless," rejoined Mr. Leslie Winyard with great presence of mind, "for we cannot change natures with any one; nor indeed do we ever wish it." ”

“ Lady Glenmore was silent, but received Lady Tilney's expressions of kindness with her usual sweetness and courtesy of manner. Lady Tenderden joined in the congratulation.
"At length, my sweet lady," she said, "you are enthroned, and we all come to do you homage. But how very discreet you were; never betrayed by word, look, or gesture, the secret which you were quite sure of; you are really cut out for the part you have to play. I envy you votre petite air moue et doucereux; don't you, Lady Tilney?"
"Nothing can be better," she replied; "I prophesy that she will play her part well." ”

“ If, therefore, Lady Glenmore was in peril, when guarded by the forms of society, in the presence of a husband whom she loved, and feeling the wholesome moral check which, to a young mind entering on the snares of life, the consciousness of a supposed cognizance of parents and friends so usefully imposes,—if, under all these circumstances of protection, she had yielded to, or rather been entangled in, an indiscretion respecting her intimacy with Mr. Leslie Winyard,—how much more fearful was her present danger, when no restraints of the kind were at hand to guard or to warn her! ”

“ I cannot conceive what the women see about him to endure him for a moment—hem!"
By this time the report of Lady Glenmore's having fainted spread through the rooms, and there were assembled around her Lady Tilney, Lady Ellersby, and the Comtesse Leinsengen.
"I do not wonder you were overcome, my dear Lady Glenmore; it was terribly hot," said Lady Tilney in her most coaxing manner. "These vile drawing-rooms are quite enough to kill one. Such a heat, and such a crowd of Heaven knows whom! And then to see whom, or what? for one never sees the ostensible object for whom one comes here. ”

“ Although she was too well skilled in reading the human heart, not to be aware that she owed this visit rather to his displeasure in other quarters, than from a spontaneous wish to enjoy her society, yet she received him, as she always did, with those gentle smiles which captivate the heart, and which is the temper ever sought for and expected in woman.
Lady Hamlet Vernon knew that the general selfishness of man seeks only the reflection of his own sensations from the sympathy of women ”

“ You know how unwilling I was to enter on a life of dissipation." Lord Glenmore again sighed, as if in assent to the truth of these words; and blamed himself inwardly that he had ever suffered Lady Glenmore to mingle, unprotected by himself, in society which now, for the first time, appeared to him, in its full force, to be of such dangerous tendency, that he felt he ought to have known better.
"But your greater intimacy abroad," he went on to ask, "Georgina? for it was abroad that these notes seem to have been written. Did you receive none such before your departure?" ”

“ The letters were the artful compositions of a man of intrigue, such as he knew Mr. Leslie Winyard to be; and in the intimacy which they discovered there was a stain on the character of Lady Glenmore, which, though many degrees removed from positive vice, was still a degradation to her and to himself. And is there not a pang of long remorse to follow such a dereliction of duty? And are there not tears of penitence, wrung from the heart's inmost core, to be shed, which, though they through mercy wash out sin, cannot wash out shame? ”

“ She was much surprised, therefore, when she came to breakfast, to find Lady Adeline awaiting her. Her countenance and air at once told a melancholy truth to Lady Dunmelraise; and she felt not only that rest had been a stranger to her, but that some more decided event, and more painful than any which had yet befallen her, must have occurred, to have, in so brief a space, effected such ravages on her youth and bloom. ”

“ I assure you I have been much amused, and think it is a very splendid scene;—so much beauty, so much magnificence, that I was quite provoked at myself for being overcome, and unable to enjoy it; but I am perfectly well again now, and I hope another time to be more used to it."
"Quelle niaiserie!" whispered the Comtesse Leinsengen to Lord Baskerville. "She ought to go back to her nursery."
"Nothing is so tiresome," replied Lord Baskerville, "as low people who are always diverted. They must be false or fools, a-hem! after their first existence in the world—hem! our world I mean—hem! ”

“ Lady Tenderden did not tell me so." Mr. Leslie Winyard half smiled, and then, as if checking himself, he rejoined carelessly, "Oh! you know these diplomatists are the most slippery fellows imaginable; that is their trade: they are so taken up with the affairs of the nation, they forget all other affairs. But it is odd that Lady Tenderden also should have forgotten her engagement to you."
Lady Glenmore made no reply, but she became more and more uneasy: her colour went and came "like colours o'er the morning skies." ”

“ You knew, my dear sister, that our opinion of that coterie is pretty much the same; and I believe it to be impossible for a young man to become entangled in such a society, and not lose all correct principle. This in itself would be a reason which would make me anxious for our Adeline's happiness, if she were so connected; for to what dangers would she not be exposed as a married woman, living in that class of persons! ”

“ Mastered by this false impression, he determined to remain silent, and await his expected dismissal. "Then," he said, "then will be the time for me to speak of my wrongs." His mind was turbulent and gloomy all that day; but when the evening came, he habitually sought the circle in which he had been too much accustomed of late to pass his time, and which had become necessary to him. As Lady Tilney had a soirée, he drove to her house; and in this routine of what is termed pleasure he courted and found that torpor of reflection which it is its peculiar and baneful property to produce. ”

“ It was this circumstance, combined with Lord Albert's being again in assiduous attendance on one whom she was now compelled to consider in the light of a rival, that had made Lady Adeline draw up the glass at the moment Lord Albert was about to speak to her, in order to escape witnessing so painful a truth. As she threw herself back in the carriage, and reflected on the unworthiness of his conduct, she became the victim of the most agonizing feelings; for what is so painful as the conviction of unworthiness in the object of our love? ”

“ If allowed to go on by herself, she will run headlong down the precipice, and no earthly power can save her. Besides, it would be such a terrible thing for us, if there was any public scandal to ensue. Consider, my dear Lady Tenderden, we should all incur some portion of blame, and she would be pitied; while we should have all those persons whom we have banished without the pale of our society raving against us, and our system, as though it were a lazaretto in which all the plagues of Egypt were assembled. ”

“ Alas! we may suspect, that when we shrink from confiding our sorrows to a friend whom we know to be good and true, we are ourselves under some fatal delusion.
Lord Albert sought not to unbosom himself to Lord Glenmore, from a latent feeling that he was himself in error; and he had not had, for many a day, the courage, or rather the virtue, to probe his own conduct, but suffered the blindness of self-deception to gather like a cataract over his mental vision ”

“ I wish it were the fashion for men of my age to make girouettes and pirouettes, and cut entrès. Grown gentlemen are taught to dance, and I have long had serious thoughts of learning incog."
"I hope you will let your intimate friends at least enjoy your first début," cried Mr. Spencer Newcombe. "But, after all, you know, Raynham, that girouettes and pirouettes belong equally to the dance of life as to the dance of the ball-room; and we are none of us quite ignorant of these, though some of us make them more gracefully than others." ”

“ The world, that in reality cares for no one's actions, except as affecting itself, looked on with indifference, and saw in Lord Albert's course only curious matter for speculation. Some pitied him as a fool, should he contemplate matrimony with Lady Hamlet Vernon; while others applauded the dexterity of the woman who could succeed in leading him captive, and secure to herself so great a prize. But one friend yet remained to Lord Albert, who would have sincerely lamented the circumstance, could he have believed such an event as marriage possible ”

“ To withdraw Lady Glenmore from that circle was nevertheless no easy task. Habits of conventional dissipation are seldom broken through without producing a mutual aversion between the parties. From this feeling, on the part of her former associates, it was his anxious wish to guard Lady Glenmore; for he felt that to a young and inexperienced heart there can be no greater temptation to return to error, than to be exposed to those sneers and contemptuous remarks which the world of folly is ever ready to apply when it finds itself tacitly reproved. ”

“ Oh! what a melancholy reflection [334] to think, if the Comtesse Leinsengen ever did think on any thing beyond views of self-interest and the gratification of self-love, that an intimacy with those with whom she had lived for so many years had been productive of no one friendship that deserved the name, and given birth to no one regret when she was about to leave them probably for ever!
Such, however, would be found to be the case with almost every individual forming part of this circle, where selfishness, heartlessness, and cold over-reaching, alternately swayed every action ”

“ How fearful is this species of happiness, which, resting on itself, forgets the hand by which it is alone upheld! Could Lord and Lady Melcombe have seen through this delusion—could they have guessed that their child stood at the moral point where the two paths separate which lead to virtue or to vice, and where the traveller in the road of life, according as he makes his choice, will be admitted in the end to misery or happiness—they would have performed their duty as parents unhesitatingly ”

“ How an enamoured imagination catches at trifles, and is the sport of hope or fear! Lord Albert for a moment felt the full glow of tenderness and trust float over his whole being, like a refreshing dew over a thirsty land ”

“ After a considerable pause, or one which seemed such to her, Lord Albert spoke.
"I do not know whether you care about politics, Lady Dunmelraise?" At this word, politics, Adeline took courage.
"No," said Lady Dunmelraise, at once relieved and recovered from her surprise, for she also had thought his preface strangely portentous; "no, I do not," she said: "they are not a woman's province, except in as far as regards the interests of those dear to her. ”

“ Alas! when we are in sorrow, we fancy any other grief would be easier endured than that which weighs us down; but we judge erroneously. [214] Sorrows spring not out of the ground; and it is knowing how to suffer the scourge under which we smart that can alone bring us any alleviation. There are few persons, so young as Lady Adeline, with feelings as finely strung, who are so well prepared to meet with trial; yet still poor human nature is in its best estate a mart for sorrows ”

“ Oh! but, my dear Lady Tenderden, for Glenmore's sake, you know, for all our sakes, you will not let this affair terminate as it must do if something is not done to put it on a right footing? You will not surely let the scandale of such a common-place dénouement attach to our society, as the infallible issue of the affair must cause, unless we attempt to save appearances, and settle the marche du jeu in better taste at least? ”

“ Both are entirely false, both equally far from the real, nay, genuine charm of true good society.
"However, in all the freaks that vanity and fashion play, there have been, and ever will be, some redeeming characters, who mix with all the fanfaronnade of the day, and yet remain uninfected with the epidemic follies. She, for instance," indicating Lady Glenmore with a look; "can any thing be more young and fresh, in mind and heart as well as years, more gay, more natural?" ”

“ Her spirits, wound up for some time to a factitious spring, had given way at last, and she could no longer keep up the deception. Languid, inanimate, almost unable to stand, she thought that she had done all which Lady Dunmelraise could demand; and, under the plea of excessive fatigue, she easily prevailed on Lady Louisa Blithewaite not to await the end of the fête, but to return to town. The general homage she had received, and the very particular dévouement of the Duke of Mercington, might, under other circumstances, have been powerful stimulants to the vanity of any young mind ”