SMALL | MEDIUM
"She, the fair sun of all her sex
Has bless'd my glorious day;
And shall a glimmering planet fix
My worship to its ray?"
--Burns .
Meredith, after leaving the Provost, was hasten-ing down Broad-street, when he perceived a car-riage approaching him. At this moment a bandof black musicians, who were in training, bearingthe British flag, turned from Beaver into Broad-street; and as they turned, struck up a march inthe faces of the horses. The suddenness of theapparition and the clamour terrified them, theyreared and plunged. A lady screamed from thecoach to the musicians to stop; but the souls ofthe Africans were lapt in the elysium of their ownmusic, and they neither heard nor heeded tillMeredith, springing forward, dashed the instru-ment of their leader to the ground. The musicthen ceased, and the coachman, by great adroit-ness or strength, or both, checked the progress ofhis steeds, while two ladies sprang from the coach,and were followed by shrieking waiting-maids andbroken bandboxes, with their contents of feathers, -59-
SMALL | MEDIUMflowers, ribands, fans, &c., showering over thepavement.
The elder of the two ladies looked as if she
could have lifted up her hands and wept; the
younger did lift up hers and laugh. "Make haste,
Nancy," said the elder; "oh, the coloured hair-
powders -- shut up the box, they are all blowing
away -- we can get none here."
"
"
"
demoiselle sans plumes, sans fleurs!" replied the
little trig Française, fluttering hither and yon to
reclaim her treasures from the dispersing winds.
"My dear mother!" exclaimed a voice, that for
a moment silenced the chattering, and called forth
a parenthetical and sotto-voce exclamation from
Thérése -- "Ah, le fils de madame -- un bel homme!"
While the usual expressions of a joyful meeting
were interchanging, Mrs. Linwood, who from her
window had watched the affair to its dénouement,
appeared at her door, calling "Jasper, bring the
ladies here, I entreat you. My dear Mrs. Meredith,
I am so sorry you have had such a fright, and yet
so very glad to see you."
"For the love of Heaven, who is she?" asked
Mrs. Meredith, so averting her face as to limit her
query to her son.
"Mrs. Linwood."
A shadow passed over Mrs. Meredith's face;
"A friend! Mrs. Linwood! strange, I never
heard my aunt mention the name," thought Lady
Anne.
"Lady Anne Seton," continued Mrs. Meredith,
presenting her niece; "and how is the dear hus-
band? and Herbert, my harem-scarem little friend,
as I used to call him? Miss Belle -- ah, ten years
make such changes -- `the boy and girl to man
and woman grown;' and yourself -- upon my word,
Mrs. Linwood, the ten years have slipped by with-
out touching you."
"Aunt forgets she did not recognise her," thought
Lady Anne; and she conveyed her observation of
the discrepancy by such an arch glance at her aunt,
that she checked the flood-tide of her civilities,
and gave Mrs. Linwood, who was nearly over-
powered by them, time to rally. She, good wo-
man, received them all literally; and, in return,
furnished the most circumstantial details of her
husband's late illness, told when he took physic
and when he did not; when his laudanum made
him sleep and when it would not -- to all of which
Mrs. Meredith "lent the pitying ear" of a thorough-
bred lady, while she was mentally wondering the
A more acute observer than Mrs. Linwood
would have understood the lowering of Mrs. Mer-
edith's brow as her eye followed her son. " Jas-
per has been fortunate, indeed, in making such
friends," she said; "a great security is it, my dear
Mrs. Linwood, for a young man to have domestic
influences, and such influences."
On opening Mr. Linwood's door, Meredith found
Isabella apparently absorbed in reading a political
pamphlet to her father. "Ah, Jasper, I'm glad to
see you!" cried out Mr. Linwood: "I give you
joy. I have been trying, ever since I heard your
mother was below, to drive this girl down; but she
sticks to me like the breath of my nostrils. Now
Jasper has come for you, you must go, Belle."
"Not must, sir, unless Miss Linwood prefers to
do so."
"Did you come for me -- I mean, did my mother
send for me?"
"Do not go down if it is disagreeable to you,"
said Meredith, replying to rather more than met
the ear.
"Pshaw! go Belle; your dress is well enough;
the ladies -- no disrespect, Jasper, it's the nature
of the animal -- will like you all the better for
being worse dressed than themselves."
Isabella was not sorry to have her reluctance as-
cribed to her dishabille; but that, though she had
some womanish feeling about it, constituted a very
small portion of her shrinking from a presentation to
Jasper's mother and fair cousin. She had, however,
enough self-control to do well whatever must be
done; and without farther hesitation she gave her
arm to Meredith. As soon as her father's door was
closed after them, he paused. He was intensely
anxious to intimate to his mother, at their first
meeting, the relation that he believed would subsist
between them; but while he hesitated how to word
this wish, Isabella prevented him.
"You have seen Herbert?"
"Yes."
"And the result?" she added, with a quivering
lip.
"Precisely as you wished."
"Dear, dear Herbert!" she exclaimed, and
sprang forward with a lightened heart and buoy-
ant step. The first flush of elevated and gratified
The light within shone on all without her. Her
personal anxieties were forgotten; and to her nat-
ural elegance of manner there was a graciousness
and brightness that made her at once shine forth as
the sun of the little circle. Mrs. Meredith had pro-
posed to herself to be condescending to Miss Lin-
wood; and was quite sure that Lady Anne, whom
she had induced, with an eye to a first impression
on Jasper, to array herself before leaving the ship
in a French walking-dress, would be frappante.
But both ladies were destined to feel in Isabella's
presence that they were lesser lights. Her simple
morning-dress, and the classic arrangement of her
dark rich hair, unspoiled and untouched by the
profane fashion of the times, contrasted most favour-
ably with the forced, prim, and fantastical mode
of the day.
Mrs. Meredith was as near being astounded as
a woman of the world ever can be, and was
actually embarrassed and uncomfortable; but Lady
Anne, though surprised, was charmed. For a mo-
ment she might have felt overshadowed; but
nothing could, for more than one moment, cloud
her sunny self-complacency. "Qu'elle a l'air no-
ble!" she whispered to her cousin -- "She has been
abroad? -- in France?"
"No," he replied; "but undisputed superiority
anywhere is apt to produce `l'air noble.' Mere-
"You find Isabella grown?" said Mrs. Linwood,
expecting to elicit a flood of compliments.
"Oh, certainly," replied Mrs. Meredith, "very
much grown: ten years, you know, makes a vast
difference. Miss Linwood was not, I believe,
much over twelve when I went home."
"Ten -- twelve -- twenty-two -- bless me! no,
dear Mrs. Meredith, she is not yet quite twenty,"
said the simple mother, as eagerly as if she were
putting in the plea "not guilty."
"Scarcely three years older than my niece," re-
plied Mrs. Meredith, with an evident satisfaction in
the three years minus.
"And what are three years?" exclaimed Lady
Anne; "they shall make no gulf between us,
Miss Linwood -- we will be friends at once -- inti-
mate -- will we not?"
"You are very kind."
"Oh, not in the least. It will be quite as much
my gain as yours. Aunt has brought me out to
make my début here; and half the pleasure I
think must consist in having a friend -- a confidante,
to talk over one's conquests with."
"Lady Anne, my love, you are so elated by
getting out of that odious ship, that you hardly
know what you are talking about."
"I beg your pardon, aunt, I do. I was talking
on the most enchanting subjects: lovers, conquests,
and confidantes."
"And what do you know about lovers and con-
fidantes, my dear child? They are the unknown
inhabitants of a terra incognita to you."
"My veteran mother," thought Meredith, "would
fain shelter my pretty cousin with the oegis of sim-
plicity." But simplicity was not in the rôle of the
young lady. "Mille pardons, chere tante," she
replied -- "have you not for the last twelve months
been teaching me the geography of this unknown
world? -- and, besides, what think you we read of,
talk of, dream of at boarding-school -- history? --
Greeks and Romans? -- no, no, dear lady: young
lords and nice officers in scarlet coats and epau-
lettes, and, now and then, par parenthése -- un beau
cousin." A bright glance at Jasper with these last
words propitiated his mother, and Lady Anne was
permitted to proceed. "I take it for granted, Miss
Linwood, that New-York is quite a paradise just
now?"
"If `nice young officers' are the birds of your
paradise, Lady Anne, it is."
"The beau cousin might perhaps be admitted
into yours," retorted the young lady, archly look-
ing at Isabella for the blush she expected to pro-
voke; but the blush called for came not to Isabella
Linwood's cheek.
Mrs. Meredith explored another face. Jasper's
Mrs. Linwood interposed. The time had not
yet passed away when such primitive hospitalities
were frankly offered and unceremoniously accept-
ed, and she insisted on her friends staying to
pass the day. Mrs. Meredith declined as reso-
lutely as courtesy would permit; but Lady Anne,
independent in all her proceedings, expressed so
strong an inclination to remain, and brushed away
her aunt's objections with such evident and re-
lentless assurance of their flimsiness, that Mrs.
Meredith was reduced, as a last resource, to yield-
ing with grace.
The day, on many accounts, was oppressive to
Isabella. Her sisterly thoughts were much with
Herbert; she was anxious for his future, and in
imagination painfully contrasted his solitary prison
with the seeming cheerfulness of his father's house.
There was something in Meredith's manner that
offended her. It was constrained and elaborate,
and it was evident to her that he shunned disclo-
sing their actual relations to his mother, and shel-
tered them from her penetration by appearing
quite engrossed in playful devotion to his pretty
cousin. She was annoyed with Mrs. Meredith's
Isabella, in her turn, was the subject of passing
speculation to Mrs. Meredith. At first, when she
appeared all radiant with animation, the sagacious
lady concluded that she had taxed all her powers
to take the heart of Jasper's mother by a coup-de-
théatre; but afterward she could find no satisfactory
solution to Isabella's abstractedness and apparent
carelessness whether she pleased her or not.
Nothing is so incomprehensible to a mere worldly
spirit, spell-bound within a narrow circle of selfish
interests, as the workings of an independent, lofty
mind.
Isabella's sole enjoyment that day was from a
source whence it would be least expected -- from
her probable rival -- from the light-hearted, good-
humoured Lady Anne; and before they parted they
had made fair progress towards an intimacy.
The intimacies that occur between persons of
"And what sort of a person is this Lady Anne?"
asked Mr. Linwood of his daughter, who had been
giving him such particulars of the day as she
thought might entertain him.
"Very pretty, and graceful, and agreeable too.
I am sure you will like her, papa. It is amusing
to see how she goes straight forward to her point,
like a bird by an air line, while her aunt winds
about as if she were manoeuvring a ship into port
in presence of an enemy; oh, above all things, I
like truth, straight-forwardness. Lady Anne is not
brilliant, nor has she, I imagine, great depth of
feeling; but she is independent, true, and kind-
hearted, and in such good-humour with herself
that she makes small demands on others -- I like
her."
"And do not fear her, Belle?"
Isabella answered to her father's probing glance
proudly. "Fear her! -- no, sir -- no," she reiterated,
but in a less assured tone.
"Bravo, my girl! but depend on't she will be a
star in our firmament, this Lady Anne. What a
"Thank you for that, papa! he is dear and
noble, and like his father in clinging to what he
believes to be right."
"That is like me," replied Mr. Linwood, wiping
the mist from his eyes; "but not like me, Belle,
not at all like me, in mistaking wrong for right."
Strangely is the human mind compounded. Mr.
Linwood had been informed of Herbert's rejection
of Sir Henry Clinton's proffer. This bona fide
intimation of the resemblance Herbert had mani-
fested to his father in this rejection, placed the
action in a fresh and favourable aspect. Vanity
has its uses.