Lady Ravensworth seemed as beautiful as Lydia Hutchinson had described her; and, as she was rather pale and delicate in consequence of being in an "interesting situation," she was really a being who might be termed, without any poetical exaggeration, sweetly fascinating. But no one who there beheld the elegant and proud peeress, doing the honours of her splendid mansion to a circle of noble guests, would have imagined that, when plain Miss Adeline Enfield, she had played the wanton at so tender an age, and given birth to a child in a miserable garret!
The Honourable Miss Maria Augusta Victoria Amelia Hyacintha Villiers was a beautiful, but timid and retiring, girl of seventeen;—and as she now appeared in the virginal white which custom had compelled her to assume for the consummation of a sacrifice which she felt—Oh! how keenly felt,—it was easy for a benevolent eye to perceive that she was a victim to cold calculation, and not a happy bride about to accompany to the altar one whom she loved.
But there were no benevolent eyes there:—there seldom are in fashionable life and in such cases. The expression of blank despair which marked the countenance of the young bride was regarded only as the token of maidenly reserve and bashfulness.
Not that she loved another: no—her heart was entirely her own;—but she was about to be given to a man whom she abhorred.
"Why did she not remonstrate with her guardian?" asks the innocent reader. Remonstrate with a stanch Tory and High-Church-supporting peer like Lord Rossville? Ridiculous! He who believed that the people are mere machines formed to toil for the aristocracy, was not likely to listen with even common patience to the remonstrances of a young maiden for whom he believed he had arranged a splendid destiny.
"But, then, poor Maria might have opened her heart to Lady Rossville?" says that self-same innocent reader. Equally ridiculous! A mother who had intrigued so well as to foist her own daughter upon an elderly noble like Lord Ravensworth, and who imagined that matrimony was nothing more nor less in respect to young ladies than "catching at the first rich man who offered himself," was very far from being the proper person at whose hands the orphan and portionless Maria could obtain a reprieve of the death-sentence which had been pronounced upon her heart.
In high life how many matrimonial connexions are based on the calculations of sordid interest, instead of the sympathies of the soul! And then the hoary peer or the decrepid nabob is surprised that his young wife proves unfaithful to his bed, and declaims against the profligacy of her conduct in yielding to the temptations of a deeply-seated love for another—a love which was perhaps engendered before the ignominious sacrifice of her person to the sexagenarian husband was ever thought of!
But to return to the drawing-room at Ravensworth Hall.
Amongst the select party assembled, we must especially mention the Honourable Miss Wigmore and the Honourable Miss Helena Sophia Alexandrina Wigmore—the bridesmaids, who looked as if they had much rather have been principal instead of secondary actresses in the matrimonial ceremony. There also was the newly-appointed Bishop of the Carribbee Islands—solemn in lawn sleeves, and pompous in the display of his episcopal importance. Lounging near the chair of a very pretty girl, with whom he was conversing, stood Count Swindeliski—a refugee who sported enormous whiskers, who had found his way into fashionable society no one exactly knew how, and who had the extraordinary but not altogether uncommon knack of living at the rate of five thousand a-year—upon nothing! Then there were several Members of Parliament who had collected together near a window, and were disputing with all their talent whether there ought to be a duty of one halfpenny or three-farthings per hundred on foreign brick-bats. Near an open piano was gathered a group of very young ladies, engaged in an edifying discussion on the character of some other very young lady who was not present. Conversing with Lord Rossville was the owner of half a county, who could return six Members to Parliament with the greatest ease, but could not for the life of him return a sensible answer to even the plainest question. Standing apart from all the rest, was a young country clergyman, who kept turning up the whites of his eyes as if in a constant agony of some kind or another—but really because he was in the presence of a Bishop, although the said Bishop never once cast his reverend eyes that way. Then there was the Dowager Countess of Brazenphace, who had "got off" seven out of nine red-haired daughters, and had brought the two remaining single ones with her just to see if they could not make an impression somewhere or another. There also was the celebrated German philosopher Baron Torkemdef, who had written a work in fourteen quarto volumes to prove that there is no such thing as matter—that we do not really exist—but that we ourselves and every thing else are mere ideas. This learned man was, as might be supposed, a very valuable acquisition to a bridal party. Seated next to Lady Rossville was the Honourable Mrs. Berrymenny, who had seen five husbands consigned to the tomb, and was looking out for a sixth. It was, however, probable that she was doomed to look long enough, inasmuch as she had no fortune, and had already reached the comfortable age of fifty-three. Lastly, there was the elegant and accomplished Miss Blewstocken, who was known to have written a volume of poems which had an excellent circulation (amongst the butter-shops), and who was suspected of having perpetrated a novel.
These are all the stars whom it is worth while to signalise amidst a galaxy of some fifty personages.