I cannot express how shocked I was at this information. Much as I had cause to be disgusted with the conduct of that unhappy woman, I could find in my mind no feeling but commiseration and horror at her death; and it was with great difficulty that Vincent persuaded me to accept an invitation to Lady Roseville’s for the evening, to meet Glanville and himself.
However, I cheered up as the night came on; and though my mind was still haunted with the tale of the morning, it was neither in a musing nor a melancholy mood that I entered the drawing-room at Lady Roseville’s—“So runs the world away.”
Glanville was there in his “customary mourning,” and looking remarkably handsome.
“Pelham,” he said, when he joined me, “do you remember at Lady—‘s one night, I said I would introduce you to my sister? I had no opportunity then, for we left the house before she returned from the refreshment room. May I do so now?”
I need not say what was my answer. I followed Glanville into the next room; and to my inexpressible astonishment and delight, discovered in his sister the beautiful, the never-forgotten stranger I had seen at Cheltenham.
For once in my life I was embarrassed—my bow would have shamed a major in the line, and my stuttered and irrelevant address, an alderman in the presence of His Majesty. However, a few moments sufficed to recover me, and I strained every nerve to be as agreeable and seduisant as possible.
After I had conversed with Miss Glanville for some time, Lady Roseville joined us. Stately and Juno-like as was that charming personage in general, she relaxed into a softness of manner to Miss Glanville, that quite won my heart. She drew her to a part of the room, where a very animated and chiefly literary conversation was going on—and I, resolving to make the best of my time, followed them, and once more found myself seated beside Miss Glanville. Lady Roseville was on the other side of my beautiful companion; and I observed that, whenever she took her eyes from Miss Glanville, they always rested upon her brother, who, in the midst of the disputation and the disputants, sat silent, gloomy, and absorbed.
The conversation turned upon Scott’s novels; thence on novels in general; and finally on the particular one of Anastasius.
“It is a thousand pities” said Vincent, “that the scene of that novel is so far removed from us. Could the humour, the persons, the knowledge of character, and of the world, come home to us, in a national, not an exotic garb, it would be a more popular, as it is certainly a more gifted work, than even the exquisite novel of Gil Blas. But it is a great misfortune for Hope that—
“‘To learning he narrowed his mind, And gave up to the East what was meant for mankind.’