"I fancied so, and therefore ordered dinner to be ready half an hour after your expected arrival," said Mabel; who tried to keep them in conversation till Mrs. Lesly should have time to recover herself; and this delay so far succeeded, that on their return to the drawing-room, they found her quite composed.
Dinner being soon after announced, Mrs. Villars gave her arm to her sister, in the tenderest manner possible, saying.
"Well, dear, I hoped to find you quite strong, I must not have any more of these naughty hysterics, or I shall think you are not glad to see me."
"Indeed—indeed, Caroline, you mistake my feelings."
"Well, then, smile away, and I shall read them right. What do you think of my Lucy?" she added, in a whisper; "I wish I could shew you all my girls—for admiring beauty, and accomplishments, as you always did—I do not know what you would say, if you saw them all together. Now, in my opinion, Mabel is perfect."
The last speech reached Mabel's ear, and, perhaps, was intended to do so—but quick as she was in the ready perception of virtue, she had never feebly blinded herself to the faults of others. These few words made her feel uncomfortable—for she was immediately aware that there was a want of sincerity in her aunt's manner, which, betraying some latent reason for dissimulation, always produces a feeling of dislike, or fear.
To Mrs. Villars Mabel soon became an object of fear—she could not tell why, but she had scarcely been a few minutes in her company without perceiving that superiority which the weak-minded find it difficult cheerfully to recognise. Superiority in what, she did not stop to analyse—but even while most lavish of her endearments, she was secretly almost uncomfortable in her presence.
Mrs. Villars had given herself a worldly education, which, though it had moulded even her virtues and foibles according to its own fashion, had never yet been able, entirely, to eradicate the sense of right which had been inculcated in earlier years; yet she only preserved it as a continual punishment for every act of dissimulation and wrong, without ever allowing it to regain entire ascendency over her; though it was a conscience to which she felt bound perpetually to excuse herself. So false, indeed, had she turned to herself, that Mabel's open, honest, truth-telling eyes seemed something like a reproach.
Love for her children—one of the greatest virtues of a woman's heart—had become one of her greatest failings. Her natural disposition rendered her love strong and untiring; but worldliness had warped its usefulness, rendering that love, in its foolish extreme, only a means of making herself miserable, without really serving them. She learned to spoil, but had no resolution to reprove; and they had grown up in accordance with such training.