CHAPTER XXXVIII.
ZEAL IS POWER.
The porter at Lady Dundas's had been strictly correct in his account
respecting the destination of the dispersed members of her ladyship's
household.
Whilst Pembroke Somerset was sullenly executing his forced act of
benevolence at Newgate, Miss Dundas suddenly took into her scheming
head to compare the merits of Somerset's rich expectancy with the
penniless certainty of Lascelles. She considered the substantial
advantages which the wife of a wealthy baronet would hold over the
thriftless _cara sposa_ of a man owning no other estate than a
reflected lustre from the coronet of an elder brother. Besides,
Pembroke was very handsome--Lascelles only tolerably so; indeed, some
women had presumed to call him "very plain." But they were "stupid
persons," who, not believing the _metempsychosis_ doctrine of
the tailor and his decorating adjuncts, could not comprehend that
although a mere human creature can have no such property, a man of
fashion may possess an _elixir vitae_ which makes age youth,
deformity beauty, and even transforms vice into virtue.
In spite of recollection, which reminded Diana how often she had
contended that all Mr. Lascelles' teeth were his own; that his nose
was not a bit too long, being a facsimile of the feature which reared
its sublime curve over the capricious mouth of his noble brother, the
Earl of Castle Conway--notwithstanding all this, the Pythagorean
pretensions of fashion began to lose their ascendency; and in the
recesses of her mind, when Miss Dundas compared the light elegance of
Pembroke's figure with the heavy limbs of her present lover,
Pembroke's dark and ever-animated eyes with the gooseberry orbs of
Lascelles, she dropped the parallel, and resolving to captivate the
heir of Somerset Castle, admitted no remorse at jilting the brother
of Castle Conway.
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