"My dear Glenmore, I see your kind intention, through this apparent carelessness of my feelings; but allow me to assure you, you are misinformed—a purer, truer, or more innocent creature does not exist than Lady Adeline Seymour; and though I have been separated lately from her, yet from my correspondence with herself, and from the invariable accounts I have received from others, I feel assured that the ingenuousness of her character would never allow her to have a thought concealed from her mother or myself in the momentous question between us. Oh no; when I look back to her every letter, the recollection brings conviction along with it of her heart being unchanged."
Lord Albert spoke with an inward agitation which corresponded little with the confidence which his words expressed. His outward appearance, however, was calm; and Lord Glenmore, supposing he had been led into a very pardonable error, and wholly innocent of intentionally wounding his friend's feelings, proceeded—
"Well, if it is thus, D'Esterre, you are already a married man, I conceive; but be it so, that does not prevent your dining with me to-day—pray come."
Lord Albert declined, saying gravely, "no! that cannot be; for I am in hourly expectation of Lady Adeline's arrival with her mother, who, I am sorry to add, comes to town on account of her health." A momentary pause ensued in the conversation; and Lord Albert, seemingly little inclined to renew the last topic or enter upon any new one, seized the opportunity of bidding his companion farewell, and they separated.
From the somewhat cold and reserved manner of his parting, Lord Glenmore, when alone, began to think he had committed a mistake in treating his friend's engagement with Lady Adeline lightly, and condemned himself for what had escaped him on the subject. For Lord Glenmore was a man of honourable, as well as kindly feelings; and in giving the counsel of a prudential marriage to Lord Albert, was at the same time the last person to think that, in an union for life, happiness ought to be sacrificed to interested views: the furthest also from his thoughts would have been any design to interfere between, or to disunite any two persons who were attached to each other. Perhaps the world in general might not have given him credit for this amiability of feeling, or for the strict principle which he really possessed, from seeing that he lived in constant intercourse with a class, where, if similar worth of character did exist at all, it certainly never was looked up to as a merit in the possessor. It must be allowed that Lord Glenmore was any thing rather than a fitting member of such a class; for in addition to warmth of heart, natural affection, and good principles, he possessed talents of a very superior kind, and held opinions quite at variance with the received creed of his companions.
He believed, for instance, that life was given for other purposes than to be spent in accident alone, or that a perpetual course of frivolous pursuits, without any higher aim or object, should be suffered to govern human existence; but that, on the contrary, every action should tend to some useful purpose. If Lord Glenmore was ambitious (and he was so), his ambition was of a noble kind; and while he sought power, his uprightness of character could never suffer him to abuse its exercise. He was called proud by some: but although impressed with a sense of the dignity of the aristocracy to which he belonged, it was not a blind and foolish estimate of rank which made him value it, but a conviction of the importance and responsibility which every one placed in the higher grades of society possesses, while fulfilling the duties of the sphere in which Providence places him; and if in society he sometimes appeared reserved, and joined not in all the empty, uninteresting topics that make up the conversation of most of the coteries of ton, it was—that his mind was filled, even in the buzz of the vapid talk around him, with matters worthy of the reflection and study of an intellectual being.
He owed his admission, consequently, within the line of circumvallation drawn by the ultra leaders of fashion, to a dread of the important consequence of his remaining aloof from their circle, and the preponderating influence which even his neutrality would afford (for Lord Glenmore was not a man to lend himself to either side in such a frivolous warfare as the decision of who were, or who were not, worthy members of the corps élite). Although the exclusives, therefore, one and all, considered him to fall short of a due proportion of that species of merit necessary to their order, yet still they united in one common effort to retain him on their side. They could have wished him, no doubt, allied to one of their own peculiar choosing, and had heard with dismay proportionate to the consequences which might frustrate their plans respecting him, the announcement of his marriage with his present wife.
Determined, however, to make the best of the unpropitious event, they had from the first decided on the general policy of endeavouring to retain Lord Glenmore's influence, by admitting Lady Glenmore (however much she might be considered inadmissible) amongst them; and thus to secure in the opinion of the world the sanction of her husband to live on terms of intimacy in their set.