"Do you dare assert that you will not obey my commands?" said Lady Palliser, rising, and assuming that fierceness of aspect before which our heroine habitually trembled.
Caroline sunk on her knees, and promising never to listen to any one of whom her mother did not approve, only intreated permission to remain single.
Lady Palliser was well aware that her daughter might at her leisure command many much more splendid matches than the one now in agitation; but in the first place she was determined, from the spirit of tyranny, to be obeyed; added to which there was a second motive, which though too contemptible to be confessed even to herself, had no doubt a certain influence on her present conduct.
The time had been when the loveliness of the infant, held on the knee purposely for effect, had added interest to the matured and lustrous charms of the beautiful mother: but now that mother and daughter had become two distinct objects, and that the eye of the beholder not unfrequently passed with hasty indifference over the still striking countenance of the former, to pause in evident delight on the fresher charms of the latter, an irksome sense of secret mortification incessantly assailed Lady Palliser. In childhood she had treated Caroline with harshness, from the united effect of a worthless nature, and a mistaken plan of education; but now the constant proximity of one who was the innocent cause of the diminution of those triumphs which had hitherto formed the sole charm of her existence, was becoming irksome to her; and awaking feelings closely allied to angry aversion! And therefore it was though, as we have said, she would have blushed to have confessed it to her own heart, that her ladyship was impatient to rid herself of annoyances such as these; of, in short, the meek unconscious rival who was, notwithstanding, the only being that had ever disputed with her the reign of vanity she had so long enjoyed, and even still felt that she recovered whenever she appeared in public without her daughter. For it must be allowed that her ladyship's beauty was at the very time of which we speak, still of so striking and splendid a character, that it lost little by comparison with any loveliness but that of Caroline, whose similarity of feature seemed to render the advantageous dissimilarities of extreme youth and infinite superiority of expression peculiarly conspicuous.
CHAPTER XVI.
Lady Palliser was inexorable, and Willoughby's knock being heard, while our heroine was still at her feet, she commanded her to retire to her own apartment and remain there till prepared to render implicit obedience to her commands.
The lover on his entrance was told with the sweetest smiles imaginable, that Caroline had taken cold the evening before, and was unable to leave her room. He was, however, encouraged to make known his sentiments and his wishes to Lady Palliser, who both accepted his proposals on the part of her daughter, and in the most gracious manner possible pronounced her own approval of his suit. Then followed the arrangement respecting the visit to ——shire, and the tour on the continent, &c. mere manœuvres of her ladyship's to gain time, in case Caroline should prove untractable.
All this, it may be remembered, Willoughby mentioned to his brother on his return from his morning visit already described. His not having seen Caroline herself, however, he suppressed; he felt he knew not why, an insuperable objection to mention the circumstance; not that he deduced from it at the time a doubt of his happiness, of which he felt he thought perfectly secure. He longed, it is true, for evening, and could not help thinking that his felicity would be still more complete when his fate had been pronounced by Caroline's own lips; yet surely the night before in the veranda she had accepted him quite as explicitly as young ladies generally do. His disappointment again that evening annoyed him very much; and during our heroine's protracted illness, the anxiety it was natural he should feel respecting her state of health, was mingled at times with gloomy apprehensions, which had yet another and a more agitating source.
At length he left Cheltenham as we have seen for Montague House. His last interview with our heroine herself was that already described as having taken place in the veranda on the night of Lady Arden's ball.