In addition to this pleasant change, Miss Euphemia's passion assumed
a less tormenting form. She had been reading Madame d'Arblay's
Camilla; and becoming enamored of the delicacy and pensive silence of
the interesting heroine, she determined on adopting the same
character; and at the same time taking it into her ever-creative
brain that Constantine's coldness bore a striking affinity to the
caution of Edgar Mandelbert, she wiped the rouge from her pretty
face, and prepared to "let concealment, like a worm in the bud, feed
on her damask cheek."
To afford decorous support to this fancy, her gayest clothes were
thrown aside, to make way for a negligence of apparel which cost her
two hours each morning to compose. Her dimpling smiles were now quite
banished. She was ever sighing, and ever silent, and ever lolling and
leaning about; reclining along sofas, or in some disconsolate
attitude, grouping herself with one of the marble urns, and sitting
"like Patience on a monument smiling at grief."
Thaddeus preferred this pathetic whim to her former Sapphic follies;
it afforded him quiet, and relieved him from much embarrassment.
Every succeeding visit induced Miss Beaufort to observe him with a
more lively interest. The nobleness yet humility with which he
behaved towards herself and her aunt, and the manly serenity with
which he suffered the insulting sarcasms of Miss Dundas, led her not
merely to conceive but to entertain many doubts that his present
situation was that of his birth.
Pages:
363
364
365
366
367
368
369
370
371
372
373
374
375
376
377
378
379
380
381
382
383
384
385
386
387