"How vastly annoying!" cried Lady Emily; "to think that this little Highlander should bear a loft the ducal crown, while you and I, Adelaide, must sneak about in shabby straw bonnets," throwing down her own in pretended indignation. "Then to think, which is almost certain, of her Viceroying it someday; and you and I, and all of us, being presented to her Majesty—having the honour of her hand to kiss—retreating from the royal presence upon our heels.
"Oh! ye Sylphs and Gnomes!" and she pretended to sink down overwhelmed with mortification.
Lady Emily delighted in tormenting her aunt and cousin, and she saw that she had completely succeeded. Mary was disliked by her mother, and despised by her sister; and any attempt to bring her forward, or raise her to a level with themselves, never failed to excite the indignation of both. The consequences were always felt by her in the increased ill-humour and disdainful indifference with which she was treated; and on the present occasion her injudicious friend was only brewing phials of wrath for her. But Lady Emily never looked to future consequences—present effect was all she cared for; and she went on to relate seriously, as she called it, but in the most exaggerated terms, the admiration which the Duke had expressed for Mary, and her own firm belief that she might be Duchess when she chose; "that is, after the expiry of his mourning for the late Duchess. Everyone knows that he is desirous of having a family, and is determined to marry the moment propriety permits; he is now decidedly on the look-out, for the year must be very near a close; and then, hail Duchess of Altamont!"
"I must desire, Lady Emily, you will find some other subject for your wit, and not fill the girl's head with folly and nonsense; there is a great deal too much of both already."
"Take care what you say of the future representative of majesty of this may be high treason yet; only I trust your Grace will be as generous as Henry the Fifth was, and that the Duchess of Altamont will not remember the offences committed against Mary Douglas."
Lady Juliana, to whom a jest was an outrage, and raillery incomprehensible, now started up, and, as she passionately swept out of the room, threw down a stand of hyacinths, which, for the present, put a stop to Lady Emily's diversion.
The following day Mrs. Downe Wright arrived with her son, evidently primed for falling in love at first sight. He was a very handsome young man, gentle, and rather pleasing in his manners; and Mary, to whom his intentions were not so palpable, thought him by no means deserving of the contempt her cousin had expressed for him.
"Well!" cried Lady Emily, after they were gone, "the plot begins to thicken; lovers begin to pour in, but all for Mary; how mortifying to you and me, Adelaide! At this rate we shall have nothing to boast of in the way of disinterested attachment nobody refused!—nothing renounced! By-and-bye Edward will be reckoned a very good match for _me,_and you will be thought greatly married if you succeed in securing Lindore—poor Lord Lindore, as it seems that wretch Placid calls him."
Adelaide heard all her cousin's taunts in silence and with apparent coolness; but they rankled deep in a heart already festering with pride, envy, and ambition. The thoughts of her sister—and that sister so inferior to herself—attaining a more splendid alliance, was not to be endured. True, she loved Lord Lindore, and imagined herself beloved in return; but even that was not sufficient to satisfy the craving passions of a perverted mind. She did not, indeed, attach implicit belief to all that her cousin said on the subject; but she was provoked and irritated at the mere supposition of such a thing being possible; for it is not merely the jealous whose happiness is the sport of trifles light as air—every evil thought, every unamiable feeling, bears about with it the bane of that enjoyment after which it vainly aspires.
Mary felt the increasing ill-humour which this subject drew upon her, without being able to penetrate the cause of it; but she saw that it was displeasing to her mother and sister, and that was sufficient to make her wish to put a stop to it. She therefore earnestly entreated Lady Emily to end the joke.