ABSTRACT
On the following day, Miss Melbourne found her Ladyship in no disposition to renew the conversation of the preceding evening. The composing effects of sleep, her usual morning’s refreshment, and half an hour spent with Fitzroy, had so far restored her to her ordinary train of feelings and reflections, that she seemed enabled to bear her share of the loss the family had sustained, with all due philosophy; and even inclined to retract a few of the praises that sorrow and unavailing regret had, in the first moments / of surprise and anguish extorted from her. Before her young friend had left her chamber, she had consulted her as to the most becoming mourning to be procured on account of this ‘melancholy business,’ as she termed it; and Matilda found, upon the whole, that the Countess had left upon her mind an impression of Lord Strathallan’s merits, much deeper than what she at this moment herself experienced.
