ABSTRACT
While Rosalie was thus, as Mrs. Vyvian believed, passing part of the time of her mother’s absence as she had directed, that excellent but unhappy woman, Mrs. Vyvian herself, was suffering under the most acute anxiety. The absence of her son, the estrangement of her two daughters, and the cold and even severe conduct of the man to whom she had been sacrificed, made together a cruel combination of evils; which, however, did not so entirely occupy her mind, but that she felt for Rosalie, to whom she had ever shewn the tenderest partiality, and to whom she would with delight have granted an asylum in her own house, had she not been deterred by the envy and ill-humour which her daughters had expressed, and terrified at the hints they had given of an affection for her on the part of her son, which, if it should once reach the ears of Mr. Vyvian, would, she knew, so greatly enrage him, that he would forbid her ever receiving any of the Lessington family again. Timid and mild, and with nerves shaken and enfeebled by a long course of unhappiness, Mrs. Vyvian was unequal to contention with a violent, haughty, and unfeeling man, who disdained to listen to reason, and held all friendly attachments, every thing that did not coincide with selfinterested motives, to be mere cant and pretence. He had never considered the Lessington family with an eye of favour; but while Lessington lived, he had been useful to him in electioneering matters, and therefore he, and of course his family, had been endured; but the apprehension of any attachment between young Vyvian and a person whom his father considered so infinitely beneath him, would not have been suffered a moment, and Mrs. Vyvian knew that on the slightest suspicion she should be overwhelmed with menaces and reproaches, which she found herself altogether unable to sustain. This dread alone prevented her from hazarding a repetition of the language her daughters had held, and compelled her to submit to so great a deprivation as that of often resigning Rosalie’s company, whose interesting gratitude, and innocent, yet sensible, conversation, formed one of her greatest pleasures, and was best calculated to soothe her wounded heart.
