impressions! What generous self-sacrifice—what a world of gentle affection, were now called forth in Emily by a moment's phantasy, whose life depended on that frailest of frail things, a coquette's vanity!
How untrue, to say youth is the happiest season of our life: it is filled with vexations, for almost all its ideas are false ones; they must be set right—and often how harshly! Its hopes are actual beliefs: how often must they be taught doubt by disappointment! And then its keen feelings, laying themselves so bare to the beak of the vulture experience! Youth is a season that has no repose.
They spent the next fortnight at Richmond—and a very miserable fortnight it was; for Lady Lauriston's villa was at Twickenham, and whether on the river or the road, the arrangement was always the same—Adelaide was the care of Lorraine. Emily soon found her fancy for cultivating the friendship of her fair rival was a fancy indeed. Lady Adelaide had been brought up in a proper sense of the danger of confidence: young friends, as her mother used to observe, are either useless or mischievous; and Adelaide duly considered her young friends as non-entities or rivals.
