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well-fancied liveries, or her exquisitely decorated mansion, she might have been-no!-I will not profane the word she would no more have been a happy woman than she would have been a rational being; but she might have been one of those animals who have no existence but in their senses, who sport and flutter in a midday sun, and who are chilled into annihilation by a passing cloud.

But the heart and understanding of Isabella alike forbad such a degradation. Nor could either one or the other have secured her happiness, had the splendors of life been presented to her by the hand of age, of folly, or of vice. As the gift of Mr. Willoughby, indeed, it is not to be wondered at if they dazzled her senses and confounded her judgment; if, in the first glow of exultation attendant on the sudden acquisition of all that she had been accustomed to hear spoken of as the

ne plus ultra of life, she did not distinguish how little she held by the sacred bond of that appropriate affection which makes of two individuals but one soul, and how much she owed to the incidental circumstance of being the wife of a man of fortune.

Isabella found herself the happiest of women; and she blessed the prudence and foresight of her mother that had made her so. Hitherto, indeed, she had thought more of the conquest that she had made, than the return that it demanded from herself. She felt assured of the love of Mr. Willoughby, but had not yet asked herself whether she loved him.

It was one of Lady Jane's maxims, that a well-educated girl would of course love the husband who had placed her above the level of her companions, that is, that she would love him "sufficiently." But she could prove by a thousand

arguments that there might be as much indiscretion in too devoted an attachment to a husband, in the wife of a man of fashion, as in the head-long fancy of any love-sick damsel by the side of a purling stream. She could talk learnedly of the various claims that people of distinction had upon their feelings, and their time;—of the duties that they owed to society; — of the immorality of suffering the Aaron's rod of conjugal attachment to swallow up all that we owed to our family: with many more such erudite and original et cæteras, as shewed at once the acuteness of the intellect, and the softness of the heart.

Isabella had taken it for granted that she should love the husband that Lady Jane presented to her, and when she saw that husband the handsome and captivating Mr. Willoughby, she had no doubt but that she did love

him, but as yet she knew not what it was to love, nor even the indications that might have assured her that she was beloved. How, otherways, could she have mistaken the even good humour, the laugh, the jest, the assured and easy approach of Mr. Willoughby, for symptoms of a heart trembling for its dearest interests, and doubtful how it should secure them? indeed, as Mr. Willoughby had made himself content with the acceptance of his offers from the mother, rather than sought to secure the affections of the daughter, he had in fact never had one doubt or fear upon the subject. He might have repeated the boast of Cæsar, with a slight variation of phrase, He came, he demanded, he obtained!— and, pleased

with his acquisition, he resembled more a happy victor than a successful lover. But the settlements were now arranged, the equipages chosen, the

jewels presented, and the moment approached, that for a certain time at least, the fiat of fashion decreed that Mr. Willoughby and his bride were to be all the world to each other.

On their marriage they had withdrawn to Mr. Willoughby's house in Hertfordshire; the season the season was November, London was empty, and every publick place supplementary to the attractions of the capital, began to be deserted. Mr. Willoughby was no sportsman; seclusion with so beautiful and innocent a companion as Isabella was a novelty that for the time filled up every wish; and now indeed might she with reason have believed herself the idol of his affections and now it was that she resigned her heart to him, so absolutely and so irrecoverably that neither circumstance nor time could henceforth restore it to her keeping. He seemed but to exist in

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