“I knew you would say so, madam,” answered Margaret. “It is what another person has already told me—it is, perhaps, what all the world would tell me—it is what I am sometimes disposed to tell myself. But look at me, madam, for I will now come before you, and tell me if there is madness or distraction in my look and word, when I repeat to you again, that I have fixed my affections on this young nobleman.”
“If there is not madness in your look or word, maiden, there is infinite folly in what you say,” answered the Lady Hermione, sharply. “When did you ever hear that misplaced love brought any thing but wretchedness? Seek a match among your equals, Margaret, and escape the countless kinds of risk and misery that must attend an affection beyond your degree.—Why do you smile, maiden? Is there aught to cause scorn in what I say?”
“Surely no, madam,” answered Margaret. “I only smiled to think how it should happen, that, while rank made such a wide difference between creatures formed from the same clay, the wit of the vulgar should, nevertheless, jump so exactly the same length with that of the accomplished and the exalted. It is but the variation of the phrase which divides them. Dame Ursley told me the very same thing which your ladyship has but now uttered; only you, madam, talk of countless misery, and Dame Ursley spoke of the gallows, and Mistress Turner, who was hanged upon it.”
“Indeed?” answered the Lady Hermione; “and who may Dame Ursley be, that your wise choice has associated with me in the difficult task of advising a fool?”
“The barber's wife at next door, madam,” answered Margaret, with feigned simplicity, but far from being sorry at heart, that she had found an indirect mode of mortifying her monitress. “She is the wisest woman that I know, next to your ladyship.”
“A proper confidant,” said the lady, “and chosen with the same delicate sense of what is due to yourself and others!—But what ails you, maiden—where are you going?”
“Only to ask Dame Ursley's advice,” said Margaret, as if about to depart; “for I see your ladyship is too angry to give me any, and the emergency is pressing.”
“What emergency, thou simple one?” said the lady, in a kinder tone.—“Sit down, maiden, and tell me your tale. It is true you are a fool, and a pettish fool to boot; but then you are a child—an amiable child, with all your self-willed folly, and we must help you, if we can.—Sit down, I say, as you are desired, and you will find me a safer and wiser counseller than the barber-woman. And tell me how you come to suppose, that you have fixed your heart unalterably upon a man whom you have seen, as I think, but once.”
“I have seen him oftener,” said the damsel, looking down; “but I have only spoken to him once. I should have been able to get that once out of my head, though the impression was so deep, that I could even now repeat every trifling word he said; but other things have since riveted it in my bosom for ever.”
“Maiden,” replied the lady, “for ever is the word which comes most lightly on the lips in such circumstances, but which, not the less, is almost the last that we should use. The fashion of this world, its passions, its joys, and its sorrows, pass away like the winged breeze—there is nought for ever but that which belongs to the world beyond the grave.”