post, and Lætitia her devotion. The risk of her casting it off had to
be faced. Marriage has been known to have such an effect on the most faithful of
women, that a great passion fades to naught in their volatile bosoms when they
have taken a husband. We see in women especially the triumph of the animal over
the spiritual. Nevertheless, risks must be run for a purpose in view.
    Having no taste for a discussion with Vernon, whom it was his habit to
confound by breaking away from him abruptly when he had delivered his opinion,
he left it to both the persons interesting themselves in young Crossjay to
imagine that he was meditating on the question of the lad, and to imagine that
it would be wise to leave him to meditate; for he could be preternaturally acute
in reading any of his fellow-creatures if they crossed the current of his
feelings. And, meanwhile, he instructed the ladies Eleanor and Isabel to bring
Lætitia Dale on a visit to the Hall, where dinner-parties were soon to be given
and a pleasing talker would be wanted; where also a woman of intellect, steeped
in a splendid sentiment, hitherto a miracle of female constancy, might stir a
younger woman to some emulation. Definitely to resolve to bestow Lætitia upon
Vernon, was more than he could do; enough that he held the card.
    Regarding Clara, his genius for perusing the heart which was not in perfect
harmony with him through the series of responsive movements to his own, informed
him of a something in her character that might have suggested to Mrs.
Mountstuart Jenkinson her indefensible, absurd »rogue in porcelain.« Idea there
was none in that phrase; yet, if you looked on Clara as a delicately inimitable
porcelain beauty, the suspicion of a delicately inimitable ripple over her
features touched a thought of innocent roguery, wildwood roguery; the likeness
to the costly and lovely substance appeared to admit a fitness in the dubious
epithet. He detested but was haunted by the phrase.
    She certainly had at times the look of the nymph that has gazed too long on
the faun, and has unwittingly copied his lurking lip and long sliding eye. Her
play with young Crossjay resembled a return of the lady to the cat; she flung
herself into it as if her real vitality had been in suspense till she saw the
boy. Sir Willoughby by no means disapproved of a physical liveliness that
promised him health in his mate; but he began to feel in their conversations
that she did not sufficiently think of making herself a nest for him. Steely
points were opposed to him when he, figuratively