“Hear the innocuous thunder roll below.”
Her rank was so high that none could dare to call her vulgar: what would have been gross in any one of meaner note, in her was freedom or originality, or Lady Dashfort’s way. It was Lady Dashfort’s pleasure and pride to show her power in perverting the public taste. She often said to those English companions with whom she was intimate, “Now see what follies I can lead these fools into. Hear the nonsense I can make them repeat as wit.” Upon some occasion, one of her friends ventured to fear that something she had said was too strong. “Too strong, was it? Well, I like to be strong—woe be to the weak!” On another occasion she was told that certain visitors had seen her ladyship yawning. “Yawn, did I?—glad of it—the yawn sent them away, or I should have snored;—rude, was I? they won’t complain. To say I was rude to them, would be to say, that I did not think it worth my while to be otherwise. Barbarians! are not we the civilized English, come to teach them manners and fashions? Whoever does not conform, and swear allegiance too, we shall keep out of the English pale.”
Lady Dashfort forced her way, and she set the fashion: fashion, which converts the ugliest dress into what is beautiful and charming, governs the public mode in morals and in manners; and thus, when great talents and high rank combine, they can debase or elevate the public taste.
With Lord Colambre she played more artfully: she drew him out in defence of his beloved country, and gave him opportunities of appearing to advantage; this he could not help feeling, especially when the Lady Isabel was present. Lady Dashfort had dealt long enough with human nature to know, that to make any man pleased with her, she should begin by making him pleased with himself.
Insensibly the antipathy that Lord Colambre had originally felt to Lady Dashfort wore off; her faults, he began to think, were assumed; he pardoned her defiance of good-breeding, when he observed that she could, when she chose it, be most engagingly polite. It was not that she did not know what was right, but that she did not think it always for her interest to practise it.
The party opposed to Lady Dashfort affirmed that her wit depended merely on unexpectedness; a characteristic which may be applied to any impropriety of speech, manner, or conduct. In some of her ladyship’s repartees, however, Lord Colambre now acknowledged there was more than unexpectedness; there was real wit; but it was of a sort utterly unfit for a woman, and he was sorry that Lady Isabel should hear it. In short, exceptionable as it was altogether, Lady Dashfort’s conversation had become entertaining to him; and though he could never esteem, or feel in the least interested about her, he began to allow that she could be agreeable.
“Ay, I knew how it would be,” said she, when some of her friends told her this. “He began by detesting me, and did I not tell you that, if I thought it worth my while to make him like me, he must, sooner or later? I delight in seeing people begin with me as they do with olives, making all manner of horrid faces, and silly protestations that they will never touch an olive again as long as they live; but, after a little time, these very folk grow so desperately fond of olives, that there is no dessert without them. Isabel, child, you are in the sweet line—but sweets cloy. You never heard of any body living on marmalade, did ye?”
Lady Isabel answered by a sweet smile.
“To do you justice, you play Lydia Languish vastly well,” pursued the mother; “but Lydia, by herself, would soon tire; somebody must keep up the spirit and bustle, and carry on the plot of the piece, and I am that somebody—as you shall see. Is not that our hero’s voice which I hear on the stairs?”
It was Lord Colambre. His lordship had by this time become a constant visitor at Lady Dashfort’s. Not that he had forgotten, or that he meant to disregard his friend Sir James Brooke’s parting words. He promised himself faithfully, that if any thing should occur to give him reason to suspect designs, such as those to which the warning pointed, he would be on his guard, and would prove his generalship by an able retreat. But to imagine attacks where none were attempted, to suspect ambuscades in the open country, would be ridiculous and cowardly.