In the mean time the hours slipped away. "Time and the hour" passed on, though at a heavy pace, with her. She had to receive the visits of condolence of all the neighbourhood-this was a painful ceremony. There was a something ill-concealed in the manners of most of these visitors, the majority of whom did not exactly belong to the great world, and had not learned the best thing, perhaps, to be got in that world-habitual politeness and self-possession. There was a something which made her suspect that the secret of the family affairs had escaped, and that the equivocal position in which her father stood was beginning to be known. There was a sort of compassion-a condescending kind of compassion-in the tone of many of the visitors, which underbred people are too often apt to apply to money disasters. The fall of their neighbour sets them at once upon a pinnacle; and to be richer and greater, after all, than the longrespected family at the Oaks, filled many a mind with a fresh accession of dignity. She bore all with true magnanimity. She had observed the world, young as she was;-she knew the value of reputed wealth, and she was prepared for all those " spurns" in adverse fortune, which our great poet enumerates among the reasons for making men out of love with life. When Lady Maria, accompanied by her daughter, made her formal call, she, who had never been cordial, was coldly and haughtily indifferent; and showed by her manner how immense was the distance she intended in future to establish between herself and the fallen family at the Oaks. But not so Lisa. The intelligence had reached her: it is a sort of intelligence which common minds always seem to spread with particular pleasure, while with many groans and lamentations they take care to exaggerate it. Not so Lisa. She would not believe it; she declared, her face red with passion, that it was all an infamous falsehood. She knew the Wyndhams well!-And, she was sure, Mr. Wynd VOL. I. N ham was a very pleasant man-and Mrs. Wyndham a very clever woman—and Emilia the most charming girl in the world; and she was positive there was not a word of truth in the report, and she was quite certain it could not be so. And, in confirmation of all these excellent reasons for incredulity, she fell into a passion, and quarrelled with every person who took pains to undeceive her. She was one who belied the maxim of La Rochefaucauld-there was something in the misfortunes of her friends altogether painful to her. She was excessively naughty the day she called with Lady Maria; she could not endure her mother's way of speaking to and treating Emilia, and showed her resentment in a manner which very much increased the embarrassment and disagreeable feelings of her friend. Emilia was in an agony all the time lest there should be an outbreak; for the young lady, who did not value her mother's anger in the least, and who was to the last degree obstinate and headstrong when she thought herself in the right, gave such very undisguised demonstrations of the opinion she entertained of her mother's manners, that even the well-bred Lady Maria could scarcely refrain from taking notice of it. Her dislike and coldness to Emilia, most innocently the cause of her daughter's behaviour, seemed to increase every moment she sat in the room. It was an excessive relief when the visit was ended, and mother and daughter rose to go. Emilia could not help looking her distress and disapprobation as, while the mother was making her cold and formal adieu, Lisa flung herself into her arms with almost an affectation of passionate attachment-there seemed indeed as much desire to vex and offend her mother, as to comfort and support her friend, in these caresses. Emilia could distinguish this-but it was not this which gave her pain; she knew it was only another form of misguided but generous attachment and indignation. — Her grief arose from anxiety for the ardent being thus unrestrained by any well-regulated principle. She pressed her to her heart with a gesture which Lisa understood well enough. But the more she loved and valued Emilia, and the more she thought her in the right, the more angry she was. She had never been properly taught to respect, if she could not love, her mother. That holy commandmentlike, alas! all the other commandments—had been learned in her Catechism, but never applied to her heart till she met the kind young monitress. She was too young, and had been too short a time with her, to triumph over the effect of long neglect and previous bad habits of thought: she effected much while they were together, but the impression too soon wore away. The following dialogue which took place in the coach will, I trust, shock the most part of you, as much as it would have grieved Emilia. 66 Upon my word, Miss Hesketh." said the mamma, her colour bright with passion, |