ABSTRACT
Six weeks had now elapsed since his duel, and Spencer was still a prisoner at Mrs. Stockwell’s; a voluntary one it should appear; for every symptom of illness, and suffering, had left him; and he seemed to have recovered every thing of his former self, but beauty; he at length condescended to rejoin the society at Woodlands. The meeting between him and Arbella was, on her part, sufficiently tender. Resolved to / shew, that no personal change could effect an abatement in her sentiments, she ran into the opposite extreme, and professed, almost unasked, an ardour of affection, that seemed only to revive in his weak bosom the fluttering sparks of vanity, even at a moment when he ought to have been aware, that gratitude would have been a more becoming sensation. This observation was one, however, which his mistress would hardly make, even to herself; and though she was rather surprized and mortified at an occasional constraint and reserve he assumed, she was content to asscribe a good deal of the remissness of her ‘Poor wounded hussar,’ as she tenderly called him, to the languor of confinement and the fretfulness of recent mortification; and to trust to time and favourable circumstances for the rest.
