Manners: A Novel, Vol 2

——Dicas hîc forsitan unde Ingenium par materiæ.
Juvenal.
Je sais qu'un sot trouve toujours un plus sot pour le lire.
Fred. le Grand.
IN THREE VOLUMES.
VOL. II.
LONDON: PRINTED FOR BALDWIN, CRADOCK, AND JOY, PATERNOSTER ROW.
1817.
Cervantes Saavedra.
It was long before Selina's agitated spirits could be composed; and when at length she sunk to rest, she was haunted by confused dreams of mixed joy and sorrow, in which Mordaunt's figure was always prominent. At last, however, towards morning she fell into a quiet sleep, from which she did not awake till several hours after Mrs. Galton and Augustus had left Eltondale.
Selina had given her maid so many charges to call her in time to take leave of them, that she had firmly relied on her doing so, little imagining that Mrs. Galton had previously determined to spare her the pain of parting. She had left a note for her, in which she reiterated her farewell, and her request to hear frequently from Selina; but the kindness of its expressions, if possible, aggravated the poor girl's sorrow and disappointment. As usual, she gave way unrestrainedly to her feelings, and wept aloud, really unconscious that while her tears flowed ostensibly for Mrs. Galton alone, her regrets arose not a little from the absence of Augustus. But, though Selina deceived herself in the belief, that she only bewailed this her first separation from her beloved aunt, she was most sincere in the grief she professed to feel on her account; for hypocrisy was a stranger to her guileless heart, yet uninitiated in the mysteries of that world, in which the timid and unpractised first learn to conceal the sentiments they actually feel, and conclude by displaying those that are but assumed. On the contrary, her genuine feelings were neither blunted by familiarity with sorrow, nor exhausted by the premature cultivation of sickly sensibility; and, though a more sobered reason might have wished the expression of them to be occasionally restrained, yet even a Stoic might have confessed, that the perfection of her judgment would have been dearly purchased by any alteration in the susceptibility of her heart.