“They are satisfied if the gilding lie thick enough on the backs of the tomes,” said the doctor.
“But what a deep, what a curious study would every character be, if we could read it through from beginning to end (skipping the preface, of course, for school-boys and school-girls are objects of natural aversion). What romances would some lives disclose—while others would offer the most forcible sermons that ever were written. What exquisite beauty, what touching poetry we might find in the daily course of some whom now we regard with little attention!”
“Your lovely Cousin Ida, for instance,” chimed in Cecilia, trying to catch the tone of the conversation, “I always think of her as a living poem!”
“If Ida be a poem,” said Annabella rather coldly, “she is certainly one in blank verse,—a new version of ‘Young’s Night Thoughts,’ exceedingly admirable and sublime!”
The countess had always professed herself attached to her cousin, with whom she had from childhood interchanged a thousand little tokens of affection. She would have done much to promote the happiness of Ida, or to avert from her any real sorrow, and yet—strange contradiction—Annabella never liked to hear warm praise of her friend. It almost appeared as though the countess considered the admiration accorded to her beautiful cousin as so much subtracted from herself. When just commendation of another excites an uneasy sensation in our minds, we need no supernatural power to recognise in it the fretting jar of the jealous chain which pride has fixed on our souls.
Annabella was also at this time a little displeased with her cousin. Ida Aumerle, from motives of delicacy which the reader will understand though the countess could not, had declined repeated invitations to pay a long visit to Dashleigh Hall. Annabella, who was eager to show her new possessions to the friend of her youth, was hurt at what appeared to her to be coldness, if not unkindness. To be easily offended is one of the most indubitable marks of pride, and from this Annabella was certainly not free.
While the preceding conversation was proceeding in the drawing-room, a horseman, attended by a groom, rode up to the entrance of Dashleigh Hall. He was a man who had scarcely yet reached the meridian of life. His figure was graceful, though affording small promise of physical strength; his features well-formed, and of almost feminine delicacy, though the prevailing expression which sat upon them was one of conscious superiority,—now softening into condescension, now, at any real or imagined affront, rising into that of offended dignity.
Reginald, Earl of Dashleigh—for this was he—seemed, figuratively speaking, never to be out of the cumbersome robes in which, on state occasions, he appeared as a peer of the realm. Whether he mingled in society, or conversed alone with his wife, proffered hospitality, or received it, he appeared to feel the weight of a coronet always encircling his brow. The question which he asked himself before entering upon any line of action, was less whether it were right or wrong, prudent or foolish, as whether it were worthy of Reginald, twelfth Earl of Dashleigh. Pride had kept the young nobleman from many of the vices and follies of his age; pride had prevented him from doing anything that might injure his character in the eyes of the world, and had led him to do many things which gained for him popular applause; but pride, at the best, is but a miserable substitute for a higher principle of action; its fruits may appear fair to the eye, but are dust and corruption within.
The earl was not a remarkably skilful rider. Nature had not gifted him with either muscular strength or iron nerve. At the moment that he reached his own door his horsemanship was put to unpleasant proof. An incident, ludicrous as that which Cowper has celebrated in his humorous poem, proved that the same mishaps may overtake a peer of the realm, and “a citizen of credit and renown.” The sudden, prolonged bray of a donkey—most unwonted sound in that lordly place—startled the steed which was ridden by the earl. Its sudden plunge unseated its rider, and the illustrious aristocrat measured his length upon the road! The accident was of no serious nature; the nobleman was in an instant again on his feet, shaking the dust from his garments; nothing had suffered from the fall but Reginald’s dignity, and, consequently, his temper. The accident appeared absurd from its cause, and Dashleigh was more provoked at the occurrence than he might have been had some grave evil befallen him.