danger in the growing intimacy between Camilla and the younger Spencer.
Her daughter was not her favourite--not the object of her one thought or
ambition. Her whole heart and soul were wrapped in her son Arthur, who
lived principally abroad. Clever enough to be considered capable, when
he pleased, of achieving distinction, good-looking enough to be thought
handsome by all who were on the _qui vive_ for an advantageous match,
good-natured enough to be popular with the society in which he lived,
scattering to and fro money without limit,--Arthur Beaufort, at the age
of thirty, had established one of those brilliant and evanescent
reputations, which, for a few years, reward the ambition of the fine
gentleman. It was precisely the reputation that the mother could
appreciate, and which even the more saving father secretly admired,
while, ever respectable in phrase, Mr. Robert Beaufort seemed openly to
regret it. This son was, I say, everything to them; they cared little,
in comparison, for their daughter. How could a daughter keep up the
proud name of Beaufort? However well she might marry, it was another
house, not theirs, which her graces and beauty would adorn. Moreover,
the better she might marry the greater her dowry would naturally be,--the
dowry, to go out of the family! And Arthur, poor fellow! was so
extravagant, that really he would want every sixpence. Such was the
reasoning of the father. The mother reasoned less upon the matter. Mrs.
Beaufort, faded and meagre, in blonde and cashmere, was jealous of the
charms of her daughter; and she herself, growing sentimental and
lachrymose as she advanced in life, as silly women often do, had
convinced herself that Camilla was a girl of no feeling.

Miss Beaufort was, indeed, of a character singularly calm and placid; it
was the character that charms men in proportion, perhaps, to their own
strength and passion. She had been rigidly brought up--her affections
had been very early chilled and subdued; they moved, therefore, now, with