It was late when Lady Glenmore returned from Lady Melcombe's; and as she drove home she pleased herself with the idea of talking over with her husband the insipid and insignificant scene of the morning, as well as losing in his society the recollection of those uneasy feelings respecting Lady Tenderden, which Lady Tilney's allusion to past times had created: and then glowed in her breast the one natural, honest hope, which was ever uppermost in Lady Glenmore's heart, of meeting her husband for the simple, single pleasure she enjoyed of being in his presence.
"Is Lord Glenmore come home?" was her first question when she alighted from her carriage: the "No" was chilling.
"Did he leave any message? has he sent any note?" Still "No, no," sounded heavily in her ears. She prepared, however, for his return, by taking more pains with her toilette than usual; and when she had finished arraying herself, not according to the code of the Belle Assemblée or Feuilles des Modes, but in accordance with that of her own young innocent face, her glass told her she had not done so in vain. She then sat for some time with tolerable patience, first taking up one book, then another, then throwing them down again; going to the instrument, touching a few chords; turning over the ornamented leaves of a Lilliputian music-book, invisibly written with a crow-quill; pushing it away, leaving it to tumble down off the desk as it might, and going to the window, the shutters of which she had not allowed the servant to close, in order that she might listen to every cabriolet that passed. At length she rang the bell, and was told that it was eight o'clock.
"Is there no message from Lord Glenmore?" "No, my lady. Shall dinner be served?" "No—yes—no—yes; bring up something, any thing is enough;" and away she went to her splendid board in her splendid apartment, with a train of liveried domestics, to sit down to a lonely dinner with an aching heart. She hastily dismissed the servants, and then leaning back on her chair, and suffering the tears that were choking her to flow over her face—
"I wish we were poor, and he not political," she said, sobbing; "I should not then be left alone, I should not be absent from him." A servant entered with a note. She endeavoured to conceal her tears, and, hastily opening it, read a few kind words from Lord Glenmore, which spoke his regret at being prevented from meeting her at dinner; and hoping she would go early to the French play with Lady Tenderden, where he would join them if possible. The ebb and flow of young feelings are very quick; and this note was such a cordial, that, as she ran up stairs, she carolled in the gaiety of her altered feelings: so soon had she forgot disappointment in anticipated pleasure.
In a few minutes more she was in her carriage on the way to the French play. When she came into the box, she found it empty, and the play begun. Lady Tenderden was not arrived; and by the time she had cast a glance round the house, bowed to some of her acquaintance, and settled her shawls, &c., she turned all her attention to the stage. It was a play which had collected a class of audience seldom frequenting that house; for it was one of those sterling comedies of Molière's, apart from his too frequent grossness, which, with the true legitimate intention of comedy, lashed the follies of the age for which it was written, and was not without its prototype in the present. Les Précieuses Ridicules is a play that all unsophisticated natures must enjoy, even those who, as in the case of Lady Glenmore, were not acquainted with the times and the persons it was written to satirize; and she herself evinced the pleasure she derived from it, by laughing naturally and frequently. Her merry laugh called the observation of several persons, not accustomed to see pain, or pleasure, or amusement, ever expressed by any outward sign, and who attributed to the uneducated only such marks of unconstrained nature; but others, again, (some few), were pleased at any thing so unlike what they generally beheld; and it conveyed to them a reflected sensation of freshness of enjoyment, such as they remembered to have felt when life was new, and before they were schooled by the false fastidious system of the world of ton, or blazéd to the zest of pleasure.
"What a pity," observed Lord Baskerville, speaking between his teeth, in his company voice, "that that very pretty Lady Glenmore should make herself so conspicuous."—He was in the Comtesse Leinsengen's box, within one of that in which Lady Glenmore was sitting.
"Not at all," replied Mr. Spencer Newcombe; "she only draws attention; and one cannot look at a prettier woman."