CHAPTER XXX. One only passion unreveal'd SCOTT. CIVIL people always meet with civility, and Ade laide accomplished her journey without meeting either accident or insult. When the carriage stopped at the Talbot Inn in Shrewsbury, she was received at the door by Mr. Webberly, who had evidently been watching her arrival. On her asking for his mother and sisters, he pointed to a window, where she saw Mrs. Sullivan attired in a sky-blue habit of cassimer, with a white beaver hat and feathers. Cecilia, in a modish pelisse, looking at that distance very handsome; and Miss Webberly, in the opposite window, intently reading. Mrs. Sullivan met Adelaide half way down stairs, apparently glad to see her. The young ladies greeted her with a slight bow, just muttering a scarcely audible" How d'ye do:"-one turning to stare out of the window, the other affecting to bestow all her attention on her book. Little Caroline, exclaiming "Oh, tie my frock quick, quick! there's my dear Adele come: I hear mamma talking to her," -burst from an inner apartment, heedless of the remonstrances of her maid, and jumping up with one spring, twisted her ivory arms about her neck; and as Adelaide fondly pressed the lovely child to her heart, her countenance expressed those feelings "Which are to mortals given, With less of earth in them than Heaven :" For affliction had indeed "touched her looks with something that was scarce earthly," and, when bright ened by any emotion near akin to joy, smiles such as might have beamed in the face of a seraph illuminated hers. Mrs. Sullivan, in a tone of sorrowful admiration, whispered to Cecilia, "Jack can't choose but fancy her; she's beautifuller than ever: I han't seen her like since we parted." "Law, mamma!" replied Cecilia with unmixed vexation, "I believe you've taken leave of your senses, since you used to say she was a sallow poking thing. You forget what beautiful girls the Miss Nathans, and the Miss Bakers, and all the Lunnon ladies are." Here, with affected indifference and real mortification, she stopped to examine the subject of their discourse through her glass. As she continued to gaze, her soft cheek became crimsoned with anger, and her beautiful eye, which seemed formed to convey the tender feelings of the gentlest female heart, scowled with the dark expression of envy. Adelaide, turning her eyes on her face, met that glance, and sighing to see the youthful bloom of this fair creature deformed by malevolent emotions, felt for her the pity of a superior nature, that from its own beatitude beholds the fretful passions of a being incessantly employed in weaving the web of its own misery, and mourns that it may not save the wretched victim from its self-destroying arts. When Adelaide sat down, Mr. Webberly, leaning over the arm of the sofa, began a complimentary conversation, which she soon terminated on the excuse of retiring to make some slight alteration in her travelling dress before the time of dinner. In the course of this evening, Mrs. Sullivan and her son overloaded Miss Wildenheim with officious civilities; and the young ladies paid her many ironical compliments intended as insults; but she would not show, by word or look, that she understood them otherwise than according to the literal sense, and amused herself a little maliciously (forgive her, for she was but human) by observing their disappointment at finding their best efforts at mortifying her fail of success. But at night, her feelings were those of bitter anguish, as she involuntarily compared this day with the last she had spent at the Parsonage of Deane, in the enlightened society of her kind friends. "But I shall meet them again ere long, and shall enjoy their society doubly from the comparison of my present associates. -I am resolved to think the time till we meet as little disagreeable as possible." Her thoughts then reverted to the scenes of her early life, on which they could now rest with mournful complacency; and, as she recalled to memory the precepts of her beloved father, with a pardonable superstition, she fondly flattered herself that he yet spoke to her heart. The treasured admonitions of this revered parent at once fortified her mind and soothed her feelings; on them she continued to ponder till sleep deprived her of recollection and his image at the same moment. Her heart was cheered by a sentiment of filial piety, similar to that so beautifully expressed by Scott's Ellen : My soul, though feminine and weak, Notwithstanding Adelaide's best endeavours to persuade herself the Webberlys en masse were a pleasant family, and not less amiable than agreeable, she now found them more intolerable than ever. Mr. Webberly's attentions were as incessant as disgusting, and to her astonishment his mother no longer gave them overt opposition. His sisters, on the contrary, were more than ever devoured by "proud spleen and burning envy;" but they excited in her mind only the most profound compassion. Pity is said to be near akin to love; it is sometimes however very closely allied to that mournful pardon we grant to a character, whose irremediable defects excite our unqualified hopeless disapprobation. As for Mrs. Sullivan, Adelaide felt grieved she could not like her, for she at least had the feelings of a mother; and where is the character so degraded, that these will not give a claim to our love, to our veneration? When she saw this poor woman, full of love and pride in her elder children, pour forth her fondness on them, and saw the ungrateful objects of her tenderness insultingly disdain it, because it did not appear in the language and gestures of what they supposed to be fashion, she redoubled her attentions, and her sweetly soothing manners, sometimes chased the starting tears from the offended mother's eye, sometimes made them flow from the bitterness of the comparison they caused her to make. But when, softened by compassion, Adelaide was reproaching herself for her want of liking to a woman, who, though a mistaken, was an affectionate mother, some trait of ostentatious arrogant despotism to those not united by ties of relationship sent her benevolent feelings, with accelerated motion, back to the source of kindness from whence they had begun to flow. Vulgarity alone was no crime in her mind; she considered it merely as an accident, to which certain conditions are liable, and, therefore, when it was an accompaniment of worth, she did not dare to feel it a fit subject of contempt. She was too noble in soul, too pious in heart, to presume, on her accidental advantages of education, to despise "the pure in spirit," who are, however lowly in earthly station, glorious in the approving smile of Heaven. But as Mrs. Sullivan was on one point alone entitled to respect, and even there imperfectly, (for, owing to the mercenary artifices of her elder daughters, she was nearly indifferent to Caroline,) Adelaide had now a hard task to perform-namely, to fortify herself once more with indifference to all her associates. Her feelings had been awakened from their temporary torpor by her visit to the Temples, and she now felt it most painful to lower them to the icy temperature they had attained in the soul-benumbing atmosphere of Webberly House. "However," thought she, "I must only play the dormouse, and, like it, having gone through a few months' torpidity, I shall then wake to an existence of positive enjoyment." Mrs. Sullivan, during Miss Wildenheim's absence, had become conscious of the value of her decorum of manner; for besides the attention it prompted this young lady to pay her, as due to the person under whose roof she resided, it acted as a restraint on the rudeness of her daughters, who, when unshackled by the presence of an example of propriety in their domestic scene, opposed their mother in every trifle with the most perverse obstinacy. Mr. Webberly, as soon as he had been refused by Selina, told his mother, in the first effusions of his wounded pride, he was determined to marry Miss Wildenheim directly. "He was rich enough to please himself after all; he was sure she was a far personabler woman than Miss Seymour, though Miss did think no small beer of herself." As he could not have Selina, his mother now wished him to marry his cousin Miss Leatherby, who was nearly as rich, though she had not the advantages of connexion, that had won her pride to prefer Miss Seymour. She had long delayed her answer to Adelaide's letter, determining she should seek another home; but her son declared if she did not bring her to Ireland, he would not go either, but would remain in whatever place she resided till she was of age, and then it would not be in his mother's power to prevent their marriage. Mrs. Sullivan, alarmed at this menace, determined no longer to use open opposition, but to trust to chance and the possibility of Miss Wildenheim's own pride assisting her to defeat his wishes; therefore offered to compromise the matter, by saying she would bring Miss Wildenheim with her to Ireland, on condition he did not actually propose for her till the period fixed for their return to England, promising she would do no |