She put this wise resolution in practice, and had already played the
same game with half a score, (the last of whom was a young guardsman,
who had just ridden into her heart by managing his steed with the air
of a "feathered Mercury," one day in Hyde Park,) when Thaddeus made
his appearance before her.
The moment she fixed her eyes on him, her inflammable imagination was
set in a blaze. She forgot his apparent subordinate quality in the
nobleness of his figure; and once or twice that evening, while she
was flitting about, the sparkling cynosure of the Duchess of Orkney's
masquerade, her thoughts hovered over the handsome foreigner.
She viewed the subject first one way and then another, and, in her
ever varying mind, "he was everything by turns, and nothing long;"
but at length she argued herself into a belief that he must be a man
of rank from some of the German courts, who having seen her somewhere
unknown to herself, had fallen in love with her, and so had persuaded
Lady Tinemouth to introduce him as a master of languages to her
family that he might the better appreciate the disinterestedness of
her disposition.
This wild notion having once got into her head, received instant
credence. She resolved, without seeming to suspect it, to treat him
as his quality deserved, and to deliver sentiments in his hearing
which should charm him with their delicacy and generosity.
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