CHAPTER VII. Like to a wayward child, whose sounder sleep SPENSER. Remove fera monstra, tuæque OVID. Dum potuit, solita gemitum virtute repressit. IBID. "ALL this, however, was not Magdeburg !" as Napoleon used to say of the compliments. whereby he beguiled the unfortunate Queen of Prussia from the purport of the interview she condescended to seek of him in hopes of regaining that precious fortress ;-and I fear it will be only too apparent to my readers that I am entering into my niece's love affairs to avoid the discussion of my own. I cannot say that it is particularly pleasant, after having figured as Pyramus to one or more of the prettiest Thisbes in the world, to find that one's better half is likely to conjoin as unsuitably with one's personal merits, as when on the stage by some blunder of the scene-shifter, half a palace is made to unite with half a hovel. In earlier life, I was never desirous there should be a CECIL-ia.— One of us was enough!-But when, in occasional paroxysms of romance, I did conceive the possibility of sitting in an opera box, over the door of which was inscribed in golden letters THE HONOURABLE MRS. DANBY, the face of the fair creature, occupying the chair opposite me in front, was invariably that of one of Greuz's transparent darlings, in whose veins the circulation of the blood is perceptible, and whose mother-of-pearly skin would put a lily to the blush.-And for lily, to be obliged to read daffodil! - For that delicate Ariel of my mind's eye, to behold a stupendous creature wanting only a coronet of towers to form a fitting representative of the substantial Cybele, that mighty mother of cities and market towns. I had not paid my court to Miss Crutchley many weeks, before I grew positively afraid of her, and strange to say, equally afraid of declaring off. She looked so majestically determined to have me, that I felt like Grildrig within the grasp of Glumdalclitch.-By the time I had been sitting half an hour in Bruton Street, I used to find my ideas becoming transfixed. I, so fluent, so colloquial elsewhere, had not a word to say for myself. Whether Lady Crutchley stalked in or out of the room, or whether Marcia smiled on me or frowned, made no difference in my emotions. Their air of lofty superiority froze me to the centre. The only diversification of my unpleasant feelings was irritation to see with what insolence the haughty heiress flourished her golden ferule over the shoulders of little Mary, to whom none of them seemed to concede the sen sibilities of a human being.— "Mary, what do you mean by leaving the door open!" 66 Mary, what do you mean by letting the fire out!" 66 - Mary, what do you mean by neglecting to answer that note !"— 66 Mary, what do you mean by forgetting to wind the blue worsted!" formed the only mode of address in which I ever heard the poor girl reminded of her existence. my On leaving the house, I invariably made up mind to insinuate to Lady Crutchley or her daughter the following day, that the habits of life acquired on the banks of the Hooghly could not be too carefully laid aside on those of the Thames; and that it would be an act of Christian forbearance to treat the poor relative a quarter as well as they treated the Dutch pug. But when the morrow came, and I bowed my way into the room, about as much at my ease as if clad in a suit of Milan steel, I no more dared broach the subject, than snatch a burning fuse from an ammunition wagon. How can a man be at his ease, who feels ashamed of himself; and how can a man be otherwise than ashamed of himself, who is sneaking heiress-wise? I used sometimes to hesitate about looking even such a little humble patient thing as Mary in the face, after whispering to the majestic Marcia she was an angel. It was a capitulation of conscience; and Conscience doth make cowards of us all. It has been said of that moral indigestion, (arising from the gluttony of our first parents over the apple of good and evil,) that it resembles the stomach,-of whose existence we are unconscious, till something is amiss.-Something must have been sorely amiss after getting up a sigh for a gaunt heiress of thirty-four, for my conscience was as uneasy as if digesting a porcupine. |