Page:Ethel Churchill 3.pdf/6

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4
ETHEL CHURCHILL.

glad, and yet there was nothing that she anticipated on the morrow. But Ethel's was a nature essentially unfitted to the cold and glittering life of society; gentle, timid, and dependent, her world was in the affections; those blighted and destroyed, existence was a blank, nothing remained wherewith to fill up the weary void.

The intercourse between her and Lady Marchmont was constant and affectionate, yet there was but little confidence. They were too different: Ethel had not Henrietta's information, nor her talents; and Henrietta scarcely comprehended the want of them. Lady Marchmont was now in the most brilliant hour of her life; her reputation for beauty, wit, and fashion, was firmly established. Her very caprices were pronounced charming; her slightest phrase was called a bon-mot; wherever she went, she was followed and flattered; and her whole existence seemed made up of praise and pleasure. With all this, there was that perpetual fever of the heart which