Years passed on—new objects and associations began to fill her reveries; her secret sorrow wore away, and this early grief became but a sad, and scarcely unpleasing remembrance. I was a very young man when first I saw Miss Chadleigh, and I have seldom been so much struck by any combination of beauty, grace, and expression, as when she entered the room at one of Lady ⸻’s balls. She was at this time about nineteen, beautifully formed, and with the bearing of natural nobility; her complexion was clear, and rather pale; her eyes dark and lustrous; and her features, as I thought, exquisitely beautiful. The prevailing expression of her face was melancholy, with perhaps some slight character of haughtiness; but when she smiled, there was such a rippling of dimples, such an arch merriment in her lovely eyes, and such a revelation of little, even, pearly teeth, as made her perfectly enchanting. “Well,” thought I, as I watched with absolute fascination the movements of this lovely being, “if beauty the most enchanting be any longer the potent influence it once was, there is no scheme of ambition to whose realization such loveliness as yours may not aspire.” How little did I dream of what was coming!
I was so much attracted—my interest and attention so irresistibly engaged, by this beautiful girl, that I observed her, with scarcely any intermission, during the entire evening. It would be ridiculous to say that I was actually in love; I was not absurd or romantic enough (which you will) to get up a sentimental and hopeless passion at a moment’s notice, and that, too, without having exchanged one word with the object of my aspirations. No such thing. The feeling with which I gazed on Miss Chadleigh, was one of the profoundest admiration, I admit, yet untinctured with any, the least, admixture of actual tenderness. I observed her with the deep and silent pleasure with which beauty of the highest order may be contemplated, without the smallest danger to the heart; and, indeed, of the philosophical nature of my admiration, I had full assurance in the fact, that I remarked, with hardly one flutter of jealousy, the attentions, evidently not ill-received, which were devotedly paid her by a singularly handsome young officer, in a perfectly irresistible cavalry uniform. This gentleman was the afterwards too-celebrated Captain Jennings.
That evening remains impressed upon my memory with the vividness—what do I say?—with fifty times the vividness of yesterday. I think I see old Sir Arthur now, as he sat at the whist-table, with his crutch beside him—for gout had claimed him as its own—his fiery face and heavy brows, overcast with the profound calculations of his favourite game, and his massive frame, shaking all over with the stentorian chuckle with which he greeted the conclusion of each successful rubber, while he slyly pocketed the guineas, and rallied and quizzed his discomfited opponents, with ferocious good-humour. I looked at this old man with some curiosity. I had never seen him before, and in his past life were not a few passages of vicissitude, daring, and adventure, such as might well warrant that qualified degree of interest which, as a young man, I not unnaturally felt in him. As I observed this hero of a hundred stories in the gossip of the day—his massive, but now crippled form—his bloated face, in which few could have traced a vestige of the handsome traits which rumour assigned to his early youth, and upon which, in the intervals of his tempestuous good-humour, I thought I could clearly discover the stamp of those sterner and imperious attributes with which general report had invested him;—as I looked on this fierce, crafty, intemperate, but at the same time, strangely enough, by no means unpopular man of the world, it was impossible to avoid the trite but natural contrast which, in a thousand such cases, is forced upon the mind, as often as, turning from him, my eye rested upon his beautiful child. How could a creature so exquisitely lovely, so accomplished in every natural grace—and, if expression might be trusted, at once so refined, so noble, and so sensitive—have ever sprung from a root so gnarled, bitter, and unsightly! Yet his child she doubtless was; for the world, with all its jealous and censorious curiosity, had never once questioned the parentage of Sir Arthur’s children, and in this the world was right. For poor Lady Chadleigh had begun her married life a good and faithful wife, and under circumstances less unhappy, might have been pure and honoured to the last. But the insults of callous profligacy had alienated and exasperated a heart at once proud and impetuous. She had been a spoiled child, and became a ruined woman. Habitually ungoverned, she was incapable of forbearance. With little principle and less prudence, she suffered a restless sense of wrong to hurry her into extravagances of conduct—intended, but without effect, to pique Sir Arthur, and wound at least his pride into jealousy; and in this mad enterprise the unhappy woman had at last effectually compromised herself, and was forced to the terrible necessity of flight. Her fall was not that of an impure, but of a vengeful spirit. It was the act of a bitter and passionate suicide, who would squander fifty lives to bring home one pang of remorse, or any other feeling, to the heart of callous indifference. Poor thing! the world understood her character, and despised her; for want of a due contempt for Sir Arthur’s apathy, and a proper acquiescence in his profligate courses, she had given herself to ruin.
“Who is that officer,” I asked a
