CHAPTER IV.


I had always felt a warm and almost filial affection for Lady Ellinor,
independently of her relationship to Fanny, and of the gratitude with
which her kindness inspired me; for there is an affection very peculiar
in its nature, and very high in its degree, which results from the
blending of two sentiments not often allied,--namely, pity and
admiration. It was impossible not to admire the rare gifts and great
qualities of Lady Ellinor, and not to feel pity for the cares,
anxieties, and sorrows which tormented one who, with all the
sensitiveness of woman, went forth into the rough world of man.

My father's confession had somewhat impaired my esteem for Lady Ellinor,
and had left on my mind the uneasy impression that she had trifled with
his deep and Roland's impetuous heart. The conversation that had just
passed, allowed me to judge her with more justice, allowed me to see
that she had really shared the affection she had inspired in the
student, but that ambition had been stronger than love,--an ambition, it
might be, irregular, and not strictly feminine, but still of no vulgar
nor sordid kind. I gathered, too, from her hints and allusions her true
excuse for Roland's misconception of her apparent interest in himself;
she had but seen, in the wild energies of the elder brother, some agency
by which to arouse the serener faculties of the younger. She had but
sought, in the strange comet that flashed before her, to fix a lever
that might move the star. Nor could I withhold my reverence from the
woman who, not being married precisely from love, had no sooner linked
her nature to one worthy of it, than her whole life became as fondly
devoted to her husband as if he had been the object of her first romance
and her earliest affections. If even her child was so secondary to her