ABSTRACT
The party now at Clarendon Park was chiefly of young people. Among them were two cousins of Lady Cecilia’s, whom Helen had known at Cecilhurst b before they went abroad, while she was still almost a child c . Lady Katrine Hawksby, the elder, was several years older than Cecilia. When Helen last saw her, she was tolerably well-looking, very fashionable, and remarkable for high spirits, with a love for quizzing 167 and for all that is vulgarly called fun, and a talent for ridicule, which she indulged at everybody’s expense. She had always amused Cecilia, who thought her more diverting than really ill-natured; but Helen thought her more ill-natured than diverting, never liked her, and had her own private reasons for thinking that she was no good friend to Cecilia: but now, in / consequence either of the wear and tear of London life, or of a disappointment in love or matrimony, she had lost the fresh plumpness of youth; and gone too was that spirit of mirth, if not of good-humour, which used to enliven her countenance. Thin and sallow, the sharp features remained, and the sarcastic without the arch expression; still she had a very fashionable air. Her pretensions to youth, as her dress shewed, were not gone; and her hope of matrimony, though declining, not set. Her many-years younger sister, Louisa, now Lady Castlefort, was beautiful. As a girl, she had been the most sentimental, refined, delicate creature conceivable; always talking poetry – and so romantic – with such a soft, sweet, die-away voice – lips apart – and such fine eyes, that could so ecstatically turn up to heaven, or be so cast down, charmingly fixed in contemplation: – and now she is married, just the same. There she is, established in the 149library at Clarendon Park, with the most sentimental fashionable novel of the day, beautifully bound, on the little rose-wood table beside her, and a manuscript poem, a great secret, ‘Love’s Last / Sigh,’ in her bag with her smelling-bottle and embroidered handkerchief; and on that beautiful arm she leaned so gracefully, with her soft languishing expression: so perfectly dressed, too – handsomer than ever.
