Page:Ethel Churchill 2.pdf/187

Rh Unbroken worldly prosperity has a natural tendency to harden the sympathies: when life comes so easily to ourselves, it is difficult to fancy it going hardly with others. Without any permanent object for exertion of any kind, we are apt soon to sink into habits of indolent indulgence, and such are inevitably selfish. Vanity was Lady Marchmont's chief stimulus in the absence of a better one; and vanity is like a creeping plant, which begins by turning its lithe foliage round a single window, and ends by covering the whole edifice: but Henrietta was a difficult person to spoil, it would take many bitter lessons from experience before her passionate feelings could become cold and hardened. Her discontent at this moment was of no selfish order, but her tears fell heavily—as she dwelt on the unkindness of not offering the aid that could have been so easily extended to her first and earliest friend. There is not a more bitter pang than that which accompanies the desire to befriend, and the inability of so doing. At this moment the door of the closet