been saved, by Helen, from an accident which, if not of great moment, would at least have prevented her from enjoying the pleasure she expected, and had necessarily stimulated her warm and grateful emotions.
Notwithstanding Lady Penrhyn departed in the manner we have seen, she did not fail to fulfil her promise, and was the first person (with the exception of Charles and his bride) to present herself in Lady Anne's drawing-room. Her reception of her brother was most affectionate—there are times when the most artificial, by habit, become natural; when the early memories of the heart, for a short time at least, spring up as a fountain of living waters, overflowing the selfish vanities and conventional incrustations which the world has planted—giving honest smiles to the countenance; artless, yet loving words to the tongue; and the gratified heart seems restored to a new childhood. Nothing could exceed the delight with which Penrhyn observed this change in his sister, who had never been herself, in his eyes, since her marriage; and whose manners, as they were generally displayed, would have been disgustingly painful at this time, when the sweet simplicity and integrity of his wife had imbued his very being with a just preference for nature to art.
But company poured in—he was too busy, and his lovely bride too beautiful, to preserve him in a frame of mind congenial with that which he desired to adopt.
