The pretensions of individuals are often cruelly mortified when they come to encounter the vast competition of a capital city. As King James said to the country-gentleman at court, “The little vessels, that made a figure on the lake, appear insignificant on the ocean!”
Happily for Caroline, she had not formed high expectations of pleasure, any hope of producing effect, or even sensation, upon her first appearance in the fashionable world. As she said in her letters to her friends at home, nothing could be more dull or tiresome than her first experience of a young lady’s introduction into life; nothing, as she assured Rosamond, could be less like the reality than the delightful representations in novels, where every day produces new scenes, new adventures, and new characters. She was ashamed to write such stupid letters from London; but unless she were to have recourse to invention, she literally had not any thing entertaining to tell. She would, if Rosamond was in despair, invent a few conquests; and like great historians, put in some fine speeches supposed to have been spoken by celebrated characters.
In reality, Caroline’s beauty had not passed so completely unobserved as her modesty and inexperience imagined. She did not know the signs of the times. On her first entrance into a public room eyes turned upon her—the eyes of mothers with apprehension, of daughters with envy. Some gentlemen looked with admiration, others with curiosity.
“A new face! Who is she?”
“A relation of Lady Jane Granville.”
“What has she?”
“I don’t know—nothing, I believe.”
“Nothing, certainly—a daughter of the Percy who lost his fortune.”
All apprehensions ceased on the part of the ladies, and generally all admiration on the part of the gentlemen. Opera-glasses turned another way. Pity succeeding to envy, a few charitably disposed added, “Ah! poor thing! unprovided for—What a pity!”
“Do you dance to-night?”