Even their gay colors appeared
to fade before her sight, and present to her vacant eye the form of
Thaddeus, with the melancholy air which shaded his movements. She
turned round, but could not disengage herself from the spirit that
was within her; his half-suppressed sighs seemed yet to thrill in her
ear and weigh upon her heart.
"Incomparable young man!" cried she, starting up, "why art thou so
wretched? Oh! Lady Tinemouth, why have you told me of his many
virtues? Why have I convinced myself that what you said is true? Oh!
why was I formed to love an excellence which I never can approach?"
The natural reply to these self-demanded questions suggesting itself,
she assented with a tear to the whisperings of her heart--that when
cool, calculating reason would banish the affections, it is incapable
of filling their place.
She rang the bell for her maid.
"Marshall, who dines with Lady Dundas to-day?"
"I believe, ma'am," replied the girl, "Mr. Lascelles, Lady Hilliars,
and the Marquis of Elesmere."
"I dislike them all three!" cried Mary, with an impatience to which
she was little liable; "dress me how you like: I am indifferent to my
appearance."
Marshall obeyed the commands of her lady, who, hoping to divert her
thoughts, took up the poems of Egerton Brydges. But the attempt only
deepened her emotion, for every line in that exquisite little volume
"gives a very echo to the seat where love is throned!"
She closed the book and sighed.
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