"Oh, yes," answered Miss Woodley, "good company, good books, experience, and the misfortunes of others, may have more power to form the mind to virtue, than"----
Miss Woodley was not permitted to proceed, for Lady Evans rising hastily from her seat, cried, "I must be gone--I have an hundred people waiting for me at home--besides, were I inclined to hear a sermon, I should desire Mr. Dorriforth to preach, and not you."
Just then Mrs. Hillgrave was announced. "And here is Mrs. Hillgrave,"
continued she--"I believe, Mrs. Hillgrave, you know Miss Milner, don"t you? The young lady who has lately lost her father."
Mrs. Hillgrave was the wife of a merchant who had met with severe losses: as soon as the name of Miss Milner was uttered, she lifted up her hands, and the tears started in her eyes.
"There!" cried Lady Evans, "I desire you will give your opinion of her, and I am sorry I cannot stay to hear it." Saying this, she curtsied and took her leave.
When Mrs. Hillgrave had been seated a few minutes, Mrs. Horton, who loved information equally with the most inquisitive of her s.e.x, asked the new visitor--"If she might be permitted to know, why, at the mention of Miss Milner, she had seemed so much affected?"
This question exciting the fears of Dorriforth, he turned anxiously round, attentive to the reply.
"Miss Milner," answered she, "has been my benefactress and the best I ever had." As she spoke, she took out her handkerchief and wiped away the tears that ran down her face.
"How so?" cried Dorriforth eagerly, with his own eyes moistened with joy, nearly as much as her"s were with grat.i.tude.
"My husband, at the commencement of his distresses," replied Mrs.
Hillgrave, "owed a sum of money to her father, and from repeated provocations, Mr. Milner was determined to seize upon all our effects--his daughter, however, by her intercessions, procured us time, in order to discharge the debt; and when she found _that_ time was insufficient, and her father no longer to be dissuaded from his intention, she secretly sold some of her most valuable ornaments to satisfy his demand, and screen us from its consequences."
Dorriforth, pleased at this recital, took Mrs. Hillgrave by the hand, and told her, "she should never want a friend."
"Is Miss Milner tall, or short?" again asked Mrs. Horton, fearing, from the sudden pause which had ensued, the subject should be dropped.
"I don"t know," answered Mrs. Hillgrave.
"Is she handsome, or ugly?"
"I really can"t tell."
"It is very strange you should not take notice!"
"I did take notice, but I cannot depend upon my own judgment--to me she appeared beautiful as an angel; but perhaps I was deceived by the beauties of her disposition."
CHAPTER III.
This gentlewoman"s visit inspired Mr. Dorriforth with some confidence in the principles and character of his ward. The day arrived on which she was to leave her late father"s seat, and fix her abode at Mrs. Horton"s; and her guardian, accompanied by Miss Woodley, went in his carriage to meet her, and waited at an inn on the road for her reception.
After many a sigh paid to the memory of her father, Miss Milner, upon the tenth of November, arrived at the place, half-way on her journey to town, where Dorriforth and Miss Woodley were expecting her. Besides attendants, she had with her a gentleman and lady, distant relations of her mother"s, who thought it but a proper testimony of their civility to attend her part of the way, but who so much envied her guardian the trust Mr. Milner had reposed in him, that as soon as they had delivered her safe into his care, they returned.
When the carriage, which brought Miss Milner, stopped at the inn gate, and her name was announced to Dorriforth, he turned pale--something like a foreboding of disaster trembled at his heart, and consequently spread a gloom over all his face. Miss Woodley was even obliged to rouse him from the dejection into which he was cast, or he would have sunk beneath it: she was obliged also to be the first to welcome his lovely charge.--Lovely beyond description.
But the natural vivacity, the gaiety which report had given to Miss Milner, were softened by her recent sorrow to a meek sadness--and that haughty display of charms, imputed to her manners, was changed to a pensive demeanor. The instant Dorriforth was introduced to her by Miss Woodley as her "Guardian, and her deceased father"s most beloved friend," she burst into tears, knelt down to him for a moment, and promised ever to obey him as her father. He had his handkerchief to his face at the time, or she would have beheld the agitation--the remotest sensations of his heart.
This affecting introduction being over, after some minutes pa.s.sed in general conversation, the carriages were again ordered; and, bidding farewell to the relations who had accompanied her, Miss Milner, her guardian, and Miss Woodley departed for town; the two ladies in Miss Milner"s carriage, and Dorriforth in that in which he came.
Miss Woodley, as they rode along, made no attempts to ingratiate herself with Miss Milner; though, perhaps, such an honour might const.i.tute one of her first wishes--she behaved to her but as she constantly behaved to every other human creature--that, was sufficient to gain the esteem of a person possessed of an understanding equal to Miss Milner"s--she had penetration to discover Miss Woodley"s unaffected worth, and was soon induced to reward it with the warmest friendship.
CHAPTER IV.
After a night"s rest in London, less violently impressed with the loss of her father, reconciled, if not already attached to her new acquaintance, her thoughts pleasingly occupied with the reflection that she was in that gay metropolis--a wild and rapturous picture of which her active fancy had often formed--Miss Milner waked from a peaceful and refreshing sleep, with much of that vivacity, and with all those airy charms, which for a while had yielded their transcendent power to the weaker influence of her filial sorrow.
Beautiful as she had appeared to Miss Woodley and to Dorriforth on the preceding day, when she joined them this morning at breakfast, re-possessed of her lively elegance and dignified simplicity, they gazed at her, and at each other alternately, with astonishment!--and Mrs.
Horton, as she sat at the head of her tea-table, felt herself but as a menial servant: such command has beauty if united with sense and virtue.
In Miss Milner it was so united. Yet let not our over-scrupulous readers be misled, and extend their idea of her virtue so as to magnify it beyond that which frail mortals commonly possess; nor must they cavil, if, on a nearer view, they find it less--but let them consider, that if she had more faults than generally belong to others, she had likewise more temptations.
From her infancy she had been indulged in all her wishes to the extreme of folly, and started habitually at the unpleasant voice of control. She was beautiful; she had been too frequently told the high value of that beauty, and thought every moment pa.s.sed in wasteful idleness during which she was not gaining some new conquest. She had a quick sensibility, which too frequently discovered itself in the immediate resentment of injuries or neglect. She had, besides, acquired the dangerous character of a wit; but to which she had no real pretensions, although the most discerning critic, hearing her converse, might fall into this mistake. Her replies had all the effect of repartee, not because she possessed those qualities which can properly be called wit, but that what she said was delivered with an energy, an instantaneous and powerful conception of the sentiment, joined with a real or a well-counterfeited simplicity, a quick turn of the eye, and an arch smile. Her words were but the words of others, and, like those of others, put into common sentences; but the delivery made them pa.s.s for wit, as grace in an ill-proportioned figure will often make it pa.s.s for symmetry.
And now--leaving description--the reader must form a judgment of her by her actions; by all the round of great or trivial circ.u.mstances that shall be related.
At breakfast, which had just begun at the commencement of this chapter, the conversation was lively on the part of Miss Milner, wise on the part of Dorriforth, good on the part of Miss Woodley, and an endeavour at all three on the part of Mrs. Horton. The discourse at length drew from Mr.
Dorriforth this observation:
"You have a greater resemblance of your father, Miss Milner, than I imagined you had from report: I did not expect to find you so like him."
"Nor did I, Mr. Dorriforth, expect to find you any thing like what you are."
"No?--pray what did you expect to find me?"
"I expected to find you an elderly man, and a plain man."
This was spoken in an artless manner, but in a tone which obviously declared she thought her guardian young and handsome. He replied, but not without some little embarra.s.sment, "A plain man you shall find me in all my actions."
"Then your actions are to contradict your appearance."
For in what she said, Miss Milner had the quality peculiar to wits, of hazarding the thought that first occurs, which thought, is generally truth. On this, he paid her a compliment in return.
"You, Miss Milner, I should suppose, must be a very bad judge of what is plain, and what is not."
"How so?"
"Because I am sure you will readily own you do not think yourself handsome; and allowing that, you instantly want judgment."
"And I would rather want judgment than beauty," she replied, "and so I give up the one for the other."
With a serious face, as if proposing a very serious question, Dorriforth continued, "And you really believe you are not handsome?"
"I should, if I consulted my own opinion, believe that I was not; but in some respects I am like Roman Catholics; I don"t believe upon my own understanding, but from what other people tell me."