But often in mid-spring will blighting winds
Do Autumn’s work: and there is pain of heart
That doth the work of time; can cloud the brow,
And pale the cheek, and sober down the spirit.
This gewgaw scene hath fewer charms for her,
Than for the crone, who, numbering sixty winters,
Pronounceth it all folly.—Wonder not
’Tis left thus willingly.
Old Play.
Parliament met early this year, and Lord Fitzhenry signified his intention of being in town at its opening. The party at Arlingford, therefore, before long, dispersed different ways; and, with a heavy heart, Emmeline went to settle herself in Grosvenor-street. Young as she was, and disposed for gaiety as she had been but a few months past, she could, in her circumstances, only look to the world and to the routine of fashionable life in London with dismay. She would be thrown into a totally new society, where she had not a friend, scarcely an acquaintance. Had Fitzhenry been to her what he ought, how proudly would she, at her lover’s side, have shown herself to an admiring world, as the being he had chosen. But this was not the situation of Emmeline, and she shrunk with a feeling of apprehension from the tumult in which she would be left deserted and solitary.