hope I covered her little _naivete_ properly. How NEW she must be!"

Then with well practised dignity, and half subdued self-complacency
of aspect, her ladyship went gliding about--most importantly busy,
introducing my lady _this_ to the sphynx candelabra, and my lady
_that_ to the Trebisond trellice; placing some delightfully for
the perspective of the Alhambra; establishing others quite to her
satisfaction on seraglio ottomans; and honouring others with a seat
under the Statira canopy. Receiving and answering compliments from
successive crowds of select friends, imagining herself the mirror
of fashion, and the admiration of the whole world, Lady Clonbrony
was, for her hour, as happy certainly as ever woman was in similar
circumstances.

Her son looked at her, and wished that this happiness could last.
Naturally inclined to sympathy, Lord Colambre reproached himself for
not feeling as gay at this instant as the occasion required. But the
festive scene, the blazing lights, the "universal hubbub," failed to
raise his spirits. As a dead weight upon them hung the remembrance
of Mordicai's denunciations; and, through the midst of this eastern
magnificence, this unbounded profusion, he thought he saw future
domestic misery and ruin to those he loved best in the world.

The only object present on which his eye rested with pleasure was
Grace Nugent. Beautiful--in elegant and dignified simplicity--
thoughtless of herself--yet with a look of thought, and with an air
of melancholy, which accorded exactly with his own feelings, and
which he believed to arise from the same reflections that had
passed in his own mind.