"Did you ever read the third volume of Tremaine attentively through?" She blushed a genuine blush as she replied: "Not quite: I am afraid—I thought it heavy."
"You do not surprise me; the mind must come tutored to the page to enjoy it as it ought to be enjoyed; and perhaps the fault which might be found is precisely this, that those who would be most likely to read it, are those who would be least likely to benefit by its perusal."
"You certainly converse, Lord Albert," said Lady Hamlet Vernon, "very differently from any person I ever conversed with; your ideas are quite extraordinary to me, quite new, and you have made me lose myself in a world of thought; you make me feel that every thing I have hitherto thought was all mistake; but you must allow me to say, that, though willing to become your pupil, I must be somewhat instructed in this novel language before I feel myself competent to reply."
"What I said seems to me very simple; I am not conscious of having expressed any abstruse or recondite thoughts: at all events, I certainly did not mean to be affected, still less impertinent—it was something you said, which startled me, and made me feel concern, and it might seem to you, that I evinced it with too much freedom—if I have erred, pardon me."
"Pardon, my dear Lord! there is no question about pardoning; but I am curious to know what made you look so very grave when I said I wished to forget my existence, and lose all sense of what had befallen me, or what might befall me, in the busy idleness of life—do you attach any very dreadful idea to this declaration?"
"A very dreadful one indeed," was his reply.
"Well, then, I do begin to believe that what I heard of you was true—you are one of the saints—I mean, one of the set of people who go about preaching and praying all day long. But then you frequent balls and assemblies, and are so charming, I cannot reconcile this idea with your air, appearance, and demeanour, or with the character of those sour, misanthropic beings: do explain to me this mystery."
"I wish I were one of those whom you so designate," said Lord Albert D'Esterre gravely,—"but indeed I am far from being so. All I can say to explain my meaning briefly is, that I have received a Christian and religious education, and consequently that I think to live by chance, and to let accident sway our actions, is a perilous state of delusion."
"What do you mean to say, Lord Albert, that you regulate all your thoughts, words, and actions, by some strictly self-drawn line of rule?"