Ellen only smiled at this rattle, but with an air so little encouraging, she soon put an end to it; yet, to one less fixed in principle, Lady Meredith would have been a dangerous companion; and certain it is, more women are ruined by listening to precepts of this nature, half in earnest, half in jest, accompanied by a sort of persiflage which few can withstand, than even by the wiles of men: against these a woman of virtue is on her guard; but she listens without fear to a female older than herself, and whom she thinks better versed in the ways of the world, till insensibly she adopts the same sentiments, and acquires that hateful worldly tone which affects to laugh at every thing serious and praiseworthy.
Ellen, however, was not so easily misled: her natural penetration detected the fallacy; and all the shafts of Lady Meredith's ridicule fell, by her, unheeded.
On the way home, Lady Juliana inveighed bitterly against the flirting manners and ill-judged raillery of Lady Meredith, who, she said, instead of improving as she grew older, was every year worse and worse, and was enough to spoil the conduct of a whole nation of women.
"Pray, my dear," said she, "don't you be led by her nonsense: I hope she will not persuade you to follow her example. Indeed, nephew, I wondered at you for placing that odd, wild-looking young De Montfort next my niece: he does not please me at all."
In short, the old lady was so thoroughly out of humour, that they were very glad to set her down at her own house.
Two or three days after this, Lord de Montfort took leave of the St. Aubyns, before he left London, on his way with a party of young men to see Oxford and Cambridge, and afterwards to go to the Lakes, not meaning to be again in London till September. He carried with him the most exalted opinion of Lady St. Aubyn, but he thought of her rather as an angel than a woman, and was devoted to her with a purity of attachment inconceivable by the worldly-minded.
CHAP. VI.
She sees once more those lovely plains expand,
Where the first flow'ret lured her infant hand.
No where she thinks the sun so mildly gleams,
As on the banks where first she drank its beams:
So green no other mead, so smiles no other land!
Thou little spot, where first I suck'd the light,
Thou witness of my earliest smile and tear—
Loved haunt!
Sotheby's Oberon.