Their golden shower being
exhaled by the same vanity by which it had been shed, they as little
regarded its dispersion as they had marked its descent.
Hence, these amiable ladies never once recollected that their master
ought to receive some weightier remuneration for his visits than the
honor of paying them; and as poets say the highest honors are
achieved by suffering, so these two sisters, though in different
ways, seemed resolved that Thaddeus should purchase his distinction
with adequate pains.
Notwithstanding that Miss Dundas continued very remiss in her
lessons, she unrelentingly required the count's attendance, and
sometimes, not in the most gentle language, reproached him for a
backwardness in learning she owed entirely to her own inattention and
stupidity. The fair Diana would have been the most erudite woman in
the world could she have found any fine-lady path to the temple of
science; but the goddess who presides there being only to be won by
arduous climbing, poor Miss Dundas, like the indolent monarch who
made the same demand of the philosophers, was obliged to lay the
fault of her own slippery feet on the weakness of her conductors.
As Thaddeus despised her most heartily, he bore ill-humor from that
quarter with unshaken equanimity. But the pretty Euphemia was not so
easily managed. She had now completely given up her fanciful soul to
this prince in disguise, and already began to act a thousand
extravagances.
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