"I don't mean such friends as one's father, mother, sisters and relations: most people have enough of them. I mean a tender, confiding friend, to whom you unbosom all your secrets: who is your other self—a second soul! In short, a creature in whose existence you forget your own!"
Thaddeus followed with his eyes the heightened color of the fair enthusiast, who, accompanying her rhapsody with action expressive as her words, had to repeat her question, "Have you such a friend?" before he found recollection to answer her in the negative.
The count, who had never been used to such extravagant behavior in a woman, would have regarded Miss Euphemia Dundas as little better than insane had he not been prepared by Miss Egerton's description; and he now acquiesced in the young lady's desire to detain him another hour, half amused and half wearied with her aimless and wild fancies. But here he was mistaken. Her fancies were not aimless; his heart was the game she had in view, and she determined a desperate attack should make it her own, in return for the deep wounds she had received from every tone of his voice, whilst reading the Sorrows of Werter.
CHAPTER XXIV.
LADY TINEMOUTH'S BOUDOIR.
Thaddeus spent nearly a fortnight in the constant exercise of his occupations. In the forepart of each day, until two, he prepared those drawings by the sale of which he was empowered every week to pay the good Mrs. Robson for her care of his friend. And he hoped, when the ladies in Harley Street should think it time to defray any part of their now large debt to him, he might be enabled to liquidate the very long bill of his friend's apothecary. But the Misses Dundas possessed too much money to think of its utility; they used it as counters; for they had no conception that to other people it might be the purchaser of almost every comfort. Their comforts came so certainly, they supposed they grew of necessity out of their situation, and their great wealth owned no other commission than to give splendid parties and buy fine things. Their golden shower being exhaled by the same vanity by which it had been shed, they as little regarded its dispersion as they had marked its descent.
Hence, these amiable ladies never once recollected that their master ought to receive some weightier remuneration for his visits than the honor of paying them; and as poets say the highest honors are achieved by suffering, so these two sisters, though in different ways, seemed resolved that Thaddeus should purchase his distinction with adequate pains.
Notwithstanding that Miss Dundas continued very remiss in her lessons, she unrelentingly required the count's attendance, and sometimes, not in the most gentle language, reproached him for a backwardness in learning she owed entirely to her own inattention and stupidity. The fair Diana would have been the most erudite woman in the world could she have found any fine-lady path to the temple of science; but the goddess who presides there being only to be won by arduous climbing, poor Miss Dundas, like the indolent monarch who made the same demand of the philosophers, was obliged to lay the fault of her own slippery feet on the weakness of her conductors.
As Thaddeus despised her most heartily, he bore ill-humor from that quarter with unshaken equanimity. But the pretty Euphemia was not so easily managed. She had now completely given up her fanciful soul to this prince in disguise, and already began to act a thousand extravagances. Without suspecting the object, Diana soon discovered that her sister was in one of her love fits. Indeed she cared nothing about it; and leaving her to pursue the passion as she liked, poor Euphemia, according to her custom when laboring under this whimsical malady, addicted herself to solitude. This romantic taste she generally indulged by taking her footman to the gate of the green in Cavendish Square, where he stood until she had performed a pensive saunter up and down the walk. After this she returned home, adjusted her hair in the Madonna fashion, (because Thaddeus had one day admired the female head in a Holy Family, by Guido, over the chimney- piece,) and then seating herself in some becoming attitude, usually waited, with her eyes constantly turning to the door, until the object of these devices presented himself. She impatiently watched all his motions and looks whilst he attended to her sister; and the moment that was done, she ran over her own lessons with great volubility, but little attention. Her task finished, she shut the books, and employed the remainder of the time in translating a number of little mottoes into German, which she had composed for boxes, baskets, and other frippery.
One day, when her young teacher was, as usual, tired almost beyond endurance with making common sense out of so much nonsense, Euphemia observed that Diana had removed to the other end of the room with the Honorable Mr. Lascelles. To give an éclat to her new studies, Miss Dundas had lately opened her library door to morning visitors; and seeing her sister thus engaged, Euphemia thought she might do what she wished without detection. Hastily drawing a folded paper from her pocket, she desired Thaddeus to take it home, and translate it into the language he liked best.