CHAPTER XV.
We hope, plan, execute; will it be vain?
Or will the future be the past again?
Truly, a little love-making is a very pleasant thing, and Lady Adelaide found that it greatly enlivened the dulness of Lauriston House. Society does much towards forming a coquette, but here the credit was all Nature's own. Every one, they say, has a genius for something, and here was hers; and it was not mere talent—it was genius. Gifted with no discernment into character, generally speaking, her tact was unerring when her favourite propensity was called into play. She saw at a glance into the recesses of the heart she wished to subdue—intuitively she entered into its tastes—and nothing could be more perfect than her assumption of the seeming best calculated to attract. To her this was more than ordinarily easy; she had no original feelings of her own to alter or subdue, but took, like a picture,
