Lest that his look of grief, should reach her heart.'"
Her listeners were silent for a few moments, after the tones of her sweet voice, which had breathed these lines with so true, so tender an emphasis, had ceased.
Lord Effingham raised himself from his recumbent position, with a sudden gleam of light in his deep-set eyes.
"Then what description of man do you think likely to feel such love?" asked Lady Desmond.
"One whom we both knew and loved, might have felt thus, Georgy, and he, indeed, was a good man."
"The contradictions of human nature are incomprehensible, even to profounder philosophers than you are, Miss Vernon," said the Earl, "and it is not always the most irreproachable characters who have loved most devotedly. But do you not think Conrad justified by the injuries hinted at, in bidding defiance to a world to which he felt himself superior?"
"Yes, I admire Conrad, I confess," replied Lady Desmond.
"I do not think hatred is ever grand," said Kate, rather timidly.
"But it is very natural, sometimes, Miss Vernon," observed Dashwood.