On her return she repeated to Fanny several times, with a sort of pathetic pleasure, the question her father had asked—"He inquired whether the lady had not been there;—think of that, Fanny:" while so incoherent was her language and so absent were her looks, that Fanny again began to fear her afflictions had impaired her reason.
After staying a few days with the new-married couple, Mr. Seymour returned home, Caroline having, before he left her, again desired him to be the friend of the penitent Agnes whenever he heard her unpityingly attacked; and an opportunity soon offered of gratifying his daughter's benevolence, and his own.
Mr. Seymour was drinking tea in a large party, when a lady, to whose plain, awkward, uninteresting daughters the once beautiful, graceful and engaging Agnes had formerly been a powerful rival, said, with no small share of malignity, "So!—fine impudence indeed!—I hear that good for nothing minx, Fitzhenry's daughter, is come to town: I wonder for my part she dares show her face here——But the assurance of these creatures is amazing."
"Aye, so it is," echoed from one lady to another. "But this girl must be a hardened wretch indeed," resumed Mrs. Macfiendy, the first speaker: "I suppose her fellow is tired of her, and she will be on the town soon——"
"In the church-yard rather," replied Mr. Seymour, whom a feeling of resentment at these vulgar expressions of female spite had hitherto kept silent:—"Miss Fitzhenry has lost all power of charming the eye of the libertine, and even the wish;—but she is an object whom the compassionate and humane cannot behold, or listen to, without the strongest emotion."
"No, to be sure," replied Mrs. Macfiendy bridling—"the girl had always a plausible tongue of her own—and as to her beauty, I never thought that was made for lasting.—What then you have seen her, Mr. Seymour? I wonder that you could condescend to look at such trash."
"Yes, madam, I have seen, and heard her too;—and if heart-felt misery, contrition, and true penitence, may hope to win favour in the sight of God, and expiate past offences, 'a ministering angel might this frail one be, though we lay howling.'"
"I lie howling, indeed!" screamed out Mrs. Macfiendy: "Speak for yourself, if you please, Mr. Seymour! for my part, I do not expect, when I go to another world, to keep such company as Miss Fitzhenry."
"If with the same measure you mete, it should be meted to you again, madam," replied Mr. Seymour, "I believe there is little chance in another world that you and Miss Fitzhenry will be visiting acquaintance." Then, bespeaking the attention of the company, he gave that account of Agnes, her present situation, and her intentions for the future, which she gave the governors; and all the company, save the outrageously virtuous mother and her daughters, heard it with as much emotion as he felt in relating it.—Exclamations of "Poor unfortunate girl! what a pity she should have been guilty!—But, fallen as she is, she is still Agnes Fitzhenry," resounded through the room.
Mrs. Macfiendy could not bear this in silence; but with a cheek pale, nay livid with malignity, and in a voice sharpened by passion, which at all times resembled the scream of a pea-hen, she exclaimed, "Well, for my part, some people may do any thing, yet be praised up to the skies; other people's daughters would not find such mercy. Before she went off, it was Miss Fitzhenry this, and Miss Fitzhenry that,—though other people's children could perhaps do as much, though they were not so fond of showing what they could do."