All this evil had arisen from Lady Berryl’s
passion for living in London and at watering-places.
She had made her husband an absentee—an
absentee from his home, his affairs, his duties, and
his estate. The sea, the Irish Channel, did not,
indeed, flow between him and his estate; but it was
of little importance whether the separation was effected
by land or water—the consequences, the negligence,
the extravagance, were the same.
Of the few people of his age who are capable of profiting
by the experience of others, Lord Colambre was one.
‘Experience,’ as an elegant writer has
observed, ’is an article that may be borrowed
with safety, and is often dearly bought.’
In the meantime, Lady Clonbrony had been occupied
with thoughts very different from those which passed
in the mind of her son. Though she had never
completely recovered from her rheumatic pains, she
had become inordinately impatient of confinement to
her own house, and weary of those dull evenings at
home, which had, in her son’s absence, become
insupportable. She told over her visiting tickets
regularly twice a day, and gave to every card of invitation
a heartfelt sigh. Miss Pratt alarmed her ladyship,
by bringing intelligence of some parties given by
persons of consequence, to which she was not invited.
She feared that she should be forgotten in the world,
well knowing how soon the world forgets those they
do not see every day and everywhere. How miserable
is the fine lady’s lot who cannot forget the
world, and who is forgot by the world in a moment!
How much more miserable still is the condition of
a would-be fine lady, working her way up in the world
with care and pains! By her, every the slightest
failure of attention, from persons of rank and fashion,
is marked and felt with jealous anxiety, and with a
sense of mortification the most acute—an
invitation omitted is a matter of the most serious
consequence, not only as it regards the present, but
the future; for if she be not invited by Lady A, it
will lower her in the eyes of Lady B, and of all the
ladies of the alphabet. It will form a precedent
of the most dangerous and inevitable application.
If she has nine invitations, and the tenth be wanting,
the nine have no power to make her happy. This
was precisely Lady Clonbrony’s case—there
was to be a party at Lady St. James’s, for which
Lady Clonbrony had no card.
’So ungrateful, so monstrous, of Lady St. James!—What!
was the gala so soon forgotten, and all the marked
attentions paid that night to Lady St. James!—attentions,
you know, Pratt, which were looked upon with a jealous
eye, and made me enemies enough, I am told, in another
quarter! Of all people, I did not expect to be
slighted by Lady St. James!’
Miss Pratt, who was ever ready to undertake the defence
of any person who had a title, pleaded, in mitigation
of censure, that perhaps Lady St. James might not
be aware that her ladyship was yet well enough to
venture out.
