CHAPTER IX.
There are few things so mortifying to a proud spirit as to suffer by immediate comparison—men can hardly bear it, but to women the punishment is intolerable; and Miss Milner now laboured under this humiliation to a degree which gave her no small inquietude.
Miss Fenton, young, of exquisite beauty, elegant manners, gentle disposition, and discreet conduct, was introduced to Miss Milner’s acquaintance by her guardian, and frequently, sometimes inadvertently, held up by him as a pattern for her to follow—for when he did not say this in direct terms, it was insinuated by the warmth of his panegyric on those virtues in which Miss Fenton excelled, and in which his ward was obviously deficient. Conscious of her own inferiority in these subjects of her guardian’s praise, Miss Milner, instead of being inspired to emulation, was provoked to envy.
Not to admire Miss Fenton was impossible—to find one fault with her person or sentiments was equally impossible—and yet to love her was unlikely.
That serenity of mind which kept her features in a continual placid form, though enchanting at the first glance, upon a second or third, fatigued the sight for want of variety; and to have seen her distorted with rage, convulsed with mirth, or in deep dejection, had been to her advantage. But her superior soul appeared above those emotions, and there was more inducement to worship her as a saint than to love her as a woman. Yet Dorriforth, whose heart was not formed (at least not educated) for love, regarding her in the light of friendship only, beheld her as the most perfect model for her sex. Lord Frederick on first seeing her was struck with her beauty, and Miss Milner apprehended she had introduced a rival; but he had not seen her three times, before he called her “The most insufferable of Heaven’s creatures,” and vowed there was more charming variation in the plain features of Miss Woodley.
Miss Milner had a heart affectionate to her own sex, even where she saw them in possession of superior charms; but whether from the spirit of contradiction, from feeling herself more than ordinarily offended by her guardian’s praise of this lady, or that there was a reserve in Miss Fenton that did not accord with her own frank and ingenuous disposition, so as to engage her esteem, certain it is that she took infinite satisfaction in hearing her beauty and virtues depreciated or turned into ridicule, particularly if Mr. Dorriforth was present. This was painful to him upon many accounts; perhaps an anxiety for his ward’s conduct was not among the least; and whenever the circumstance occurred, he could with difficulty restrain his anger. Miss Fenton was not only a person whose amiable qualities he admired, but she was soon to be allied to him by her marriage with his nearest relation, Lord Elmwood, a young nobleman whom he sincerely loved.
Lord Elmwood had discovered all that beauty in Miss Fenton which every common observer could not but see. The charms of her mind and of her fortune had been pointed out by his tutor; and the utility of the marriage, in perfect submission to his precepts, he never permitted himself to question.
This preceptor held with a magisterial power the government of his pupil’s passions; nay, governed them so entirely, that no one could perceive (nor did the young Lord himself know) that he had any.
This rigid monitor and friend was a Mr. Sandford, bred a Jesuit in the same college at which Dorriforth had since been educated, but before his time the order was compelled to take another name. Sandford had been the tutor of Dorriforth as well as of his cousin, Lord Elmwood, and by this double tie seemed now entailed upon the family. As a Jesuit, he was consequently a man of learning; possessed of steadiness to accomplish the end of any design once meditated, and of sagacity to direct the conduct of men more powerful, but less ingenious, than himself. The young Earl, accustomed in his infancy to fear him as his master, in his youthful manhood received every new indulgence with gratitude, and at length loved him as a father—nor had Dorriforth as yet shaken off similar sensations.