"
Lady Sara believed herself incapable of this exertion, and hated the
woman who thought it necessary. By letter and conversation Lady
Tinemouth tried to display in every possible light the enormity of
giving encouragement to such an attachment, and ended with the
unanswerable climax--the consideration of her duty to Heaven.
Of this argument Lady Sara knew little. She never reflected on the
true nature of religion, though she sometimes went to church,
repeated the prayers, without being conscious of their spirit; and
when the coughing, sneezing, and blowing of noses which commonly
accompany the text subsided, she generally called up the remembrance
of the last ball, or an anticipation of the next assembly, to amuse
herself until the prosing business was over. From church she drove to
the Park, where, bowling round the ring, or sauntering in the
gardens, she soon forgot that there existed in the universe a Power
of higher consequence to please than her own vanity--and the
admiration of the spectators.
Lady Sara would have shuddered at hearing any one declare himself a
deist, much more an atheist; but for any influence which her nominal
belief held over her desires, she might as well have been either. She
never committed an action deserving the name of premeditated injury,
nor went far out of her way to do her best friend a service,--not
because she wanted inclination, but she ceased to remember both the
petitioner and his petition before he had been five minutes from her
sight.
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