But the natural vivacity, the gaiety which report had given to Miss Milner, were softened by her recent sorrow to a meek sadness—and that haughty display of charms, imputed to her manners, was changed to a pensive demeanor. The instant Dorriforth was introduced to her by Miss Woodley as her “Guardian, and her deceased father’s most beloved friend,” she burst into tears, knelt down to him for a moment, and promised ever to obey him as her father. He had his handkerchief to his face at the time, or she would have beheld the agitation—the remotest sensations of his heart.
This affecting introduction being over, after some minutes passed in general conversation, the carriages were again ordered; and, bidding farewell to the relations who had accompanied her, Miss Milner, her guardian, and Miss Woodley departed for town; the two ladies in Miss Milner’s carriage, and Dorriforth in that in which he came.
Miss Woodley, as they rode along, made no attempts to ingratiate herself with Miss Milner; though, perhaps, such an honour might constitute one of her first wishes—she behaved to her but as she constantly behaved to every other human creature—that, was sufficient to gain the esteem of a person possessed of an understanding equal to Miss Milner’s—she had penetration to discover Miss Woodley’s unaffected worth, and was soon induced to reward it with the warmest friendship.
CHAPTER IV.
After a night’s rest in London, less violently impressed with the loss of her father, reconciled, if not already attached to her new acquaintance, her thoughts pleasingly occupied with the reflection that she was in that gay metropolis—a wild and rapturous picture of which her active fancy had often formed—Miss Milner waked from a peaceful and refreshing sleep, with much of that vivacity, and with all those airy charms, which for a while had yielded their transcendent power to the weaker influence of her filial sorrow.
Beautiful as she had appeared to Miss Woodley and to Dorriforth on the preceding day, when she joined them this morning at breakfast, re-possessed of her lively elegance and dignified simplicity, they gazed at her, and at each other alternately, with astonishment!—and Mrs. Horton, as she sat at the head of her tea-table, felt herself but as a menial servant: such command has beauty if united with sense and virtue. In Miss Milner it was so united. Yet let not our over-scrupulous readers be misled, and extend their idea of her virtue so as to magnify it beyond that which frail mortals commonly possess; nor must they cavil, if, on a nearer view, they find it less—but let them consider, that if she had more faults than generally belong to others, she had likewise more temptations.
From her infancy she had been indulged in all her wishes to the extreme of folly, and started habitually at the unpleasant voice of control. She was beautiful; she had been too frequently told the high value of that beauty, and thought every moment passed in wasteful idleness during which she was not gaining some new conquest. She had a quick sensibility, which too frequently discovered itself in the immediate resentment of injuries or neglect. She had, besides, acquired the dangerous character of a wit; but to which she had no real pretensions, although the most discerning critic, hearing her converse, might fall into this mistake. Her replies had all the effect of repartee, not because she possessed those qualities which can properly be called wit, but that what she said was delivered with an energy, an instantaneous and powerful conception of the sentiment, joined with a real or a well-counterfeited simplicity, a quick turn of the eye, and an arch smile. Her words were but the words of others, and, like those of others, put into common sentences; but the delivery made them pass for wit, as grace in an ill-proportioned figure will often make it pass for symmetry.
And now—leaving description—the reader must form a judgment of her by her actions; by all the round of great or trivial circumstances that shall be related.
At breakfast, which had just begun at the commencement of this chapter, the conversation was lively on the part of Miss Milner, wise on the part of Dorriforth, good on the part of Miss Woodley, and an endeavour at all three on the part of Mrs. Horton. The discourse at length drew from Mr. Dorriforth this observation: