ABSTRACT
Arbella, though she had recovered from the first surprise produced by learning Spencer’s unaccountable infatuation, yet the more she reflected, felt it the more impossible to find a clue to such strange inconsistency. It might, perhaps, have been discovered in the principle that ruled his life; that vanity, which had long led him to set so high a value on his own merit, that the most elevated rank, the most finished beauty, was deemed hardly worthy to aspire to his notice, had received a sudden and mortifying check. Deprived of his usual resources, and dreading to become an object of mere compassion in those scenes where he had formerly been regarded with the tenderest interest; he readily accepted the intoxicating draught of flattery from the first hand that presented it. In Miss Hautenville there seemed nothing to fear; but Miss Hautenville surpassed him in his own arts. She had ingenuity to persuade him he was the object of a sincere and ardent passion, of which his then alarming situation at length forced from her the avowal. Her sensibility immediately made her of consequence in his eyes, and when we add, the advantage of their perpetual tête-a-têtes, we must only refer to her ability, and Captain Fitzroy’s inveterate habit of coquetting, to explain the rest. As for his former bien-aimée, 47 she began to derive consolation both from the flexibility and elasticity of her mind; it could bend to pleasures that afforded no gratification to Matilda, and it could rise against undeserved injury with a spirit, which, if it bespoke a smaller portion of sensibility, and had its source rather / in self-opinion than self-respect, yet, ultimately, answered the end of consolation as effectually as if it had derived its origin from a nobler principle. Matilda, without possessing the romantic extravagance of either, was the connecting link that united the fair enthusiasts;a and tempered the vivacity of their sallies. Arbella was ready, at length, sincerely to subscribe to the superiority that she had formerly, amid the fancied triumphs of coquetry, rather insidiously allowed her unaffected and artless young friend; and Sappho, who might be said to possess the frankest vanity that ever woman had, used often to declare Miss Melbourne was the only beauty whom she did not envy for her charms; and who did not, in return, hate her for her talents.
