Kate felt her cousin's civility to her friend as the most delicate kindness, and thanked her with an eloquent glance.
Lady Desmond seemed to cling more to Miss Vernon since she had made the confession detailed in the last chapter; she had seemed more cheerful, and hopeful too, as if relieved by her confidence in another—her manner with Lord Effingham, had more of frankness and courage, and he, ever keen and quick, was evidently aware of some change in the mind, or heart, he knew so well; and for the moment seemed roused from his habitual indifference to a deeper and more palpable interest. Kate watched all this anxiously. "Is he afraid of losing her," she thought. "Ah, if she would try to be, and not merely to seem, careless of him, she would bind him to her—there is something so irresistible in the evidence of truth. But how foolish—how worthless it all is—they are both too prosperous to love in earnest!"
"In climes full of sunshine, though splendid their dyes,
But faint are the odours, the flowers shed about,
'Tis the mist, and the clouds of our own weeping skies,
That draw their full spirit of fragrancy out.
So the wild glow of passion, may kindle from mirth;
But 'tis only in grief, true affection appears—
To the magic of smiles, it may first owe its birth,
But the soul of its sweetness is drawn out by tears."