However, he found no inconsiderable
degree of amusement from the unreflecting volubility and giddy
sallies of her friend; and, on the whole, spent the two hours he
passed there with some perceptions of his almost forgotten sense of
pleasure.
He was in an elegant apartment, in the company of two lovely and
accomplished women, and he was the object of their entire attention
and gratitude. He had been used to this in his days of happiness,
when he was "the expectancy and rose of the fair state, the glass of
fashion and the mould of form,--the observed of all observers!" and
the re-appearance of such a scene awakened, with tender remembrances,
an associating sensibility which made him rise with regret when the
clock struck eleven.
Lady Tinemouth bade him good-night, with an earnest request that he
would shortly repeat his visit; and they parted, mutually pleased
with each other.
CHAPTER XIX.
FRIENDSHIP A STAFF IN HUMAN LIFE.
Pleased as the count was with the acquaintance to which his gallantry
had introduced him, he did not repeat his visit for a long time.
A few mornings after his meeting with Lady Tinemouth, the hard frost
broke up. The change in the atmosphere produced so alarming a relapse
of the general's rheumatic fever, that his friend watched by his
pillow ten days and nights. At the end of this period he recovered
sufficiently to sit up and read or to amuse himself by registering
the melancholy events of the last campaigns in a large book, and
illustrating it with plans of the battles.
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