She cared very little for expensive jewels and magnificent attire, and did not feel at home in the splendid halls and saloons of the wealthy and high-born. When arrayed for the first time in a costume befitting her rank, to attend a great ball given by the beautiful Duchess of——, and led before the mirror to admire the charming image it reflected, the simple girl shocked her lady's maid—a very great lady indeed in her own estimation—by turning from the glass and bursting into tears.
Her romantic story had excited the greatest interest in the public mind. Crowds collected round the Earl's town residence to catch a glimpse of his beautiful daughter when she took a drive in the carriage, and men and women vied with each other in extolling the charms of her person and the unaffected grace of her deportment. Songs were made and sung in her praise, and wherever she appeared she was forced to submit to the flatteries and adulations of a crowd of admirers.
This was all very painful to Dorothy; it oppressed her, restrained her natural freedom, and rendered her a silent passive observer in the society in which she might have shone. She was not insensible to the admiration of the new friends, who had so graciously received her into their charmed circle, but she longed to get out of it, and find herself once more in the country.
She wrote daily to her lover an account of all she heard and saw, which helped to beguile the tedium of a separation. In answer to a paragraph in one of his letters, she said:—
"You are afraid, dear Gerard, that I may be induced to forget you, surrounded by so many admirers; that all this gaiety and ball-going may give me a taste for frivolous amusements, and spoil my heart. It cannot damage what it never touches—I hardly know I have a heart; it lies so still under this weight of jewels and brocade. It is only in the silence of my own chamber, when my thoughts flow back to you, that it awakes to life and happiness.
"Everything strikes me as hollow and false, in the life I am at present compelled to lead. People live for the world and its opinions, and not for each other, still less for God. They dare not be simple and natural, and love the truth for its own sake—the blessed truth that would set them free from all these conventional forms and ceremonies, that shackle the soul and deaden all its heavenward aspirations. You will laugh at me, Gerard, when I declare to you that I have experienced more real enjoyment in working among the new-mown hay, and inhaling its delicious perfume, when the skylark was warbling in the blue heaven above me, than I have ever known in these crowded palaces, following the dull routine of what my noble young friends term pleasure. You need not fear such gorgeous insipidities will ever wean me from the love of nature, or make me indifferent to the quiet happiness of a country life, the higher enjoyment of being useful and striving to benefit others."
On several occasions, when riding out with her father, Dorothy had been startled by observing a face in the crowd that bore a strong resemblance to Gilbert Rushmere, but haggard and degraded, regarding her with a fixed scowling stare of recognition, from which she shrunk with feelings of terror and disgust. Why did this person follow her whenever she appeared in public, glaring upon her with those wild bloodshot eyes, with unequivocal glances of hatred and ferocity.
It was impossible that it could be Gilbert, and yet the fear that the presence of this person never failed to inspire, convinced her, much as she repressed the ungenerous idea, that it was he, and no other. Once, when dismounting at her milliner's in Bond Street, she was so near to him, that they were almost face to face. He put his sole remaining hand hastily into the breast pocket of his coat, as if to deliver something to her, but was pushed back, and told to get out of the lady's way by the footman, and, with a glare of rage and disappointment, had shrunk back among the crowd.
This frightful apparition haunted her for several days, and disturbed her mind so much that she kept close in doors, pleading indisposition to avoid her usual drive.