- ject:—study, nay, labour she had preferred
to this total want of interest. While politics and military movements engaged Lord Avondale almost wholly, and the rest of the family seemed to exist happily enough in the usual course, she longed for she knew not what. There was a change in her sentiments, but she could not define it. It was not as it had been once: yet there was no cause for complaint. She was happy, but her heart seemed not to partake of her happiness: regret mingled at times with her enjoyments.
Lady Mowbray spoke with some asperity of her late conduct; Lady Elizabeth enquired laughingly if all she heard were true; for every folly, every fault, exaggerated and misrepresented, had flown before her: she found that all which she had considered as merely harmless, now appeared in a new and more unpleasing light. Censures at home and flattery abroad are a severe trial to the vain and the proud. She thought
