Page:Lady Anne Granard 3.pdf/4

2 surmises as to the character, and especially the temper, of Lord Allerton, and not a few of the fears, which are the result of advanced judgment, and the knowledge which arises from observation. Mary could not be at twenty-six the same perfectly artless, confiding, hoping creature she had been at nineteen; nor could she expect that Lord Allerton could be the man she had known him. He knew himself to have been duped by a woman, and he might thence deem the whole sex more or less deceitful; his fortune had been injured by the extravagance of a first wife, and it would be natural for him to become suspicious, perhaps niggardly, with a second, especially the daughter of a mother whose errors were undoubtedly often descanted upon by the lady from whom he was separated. In her situation there could be no doubt that the home to which he might remove her must be much happier than the one she had long known with her mother, but it was a point for consideration whether it would be so compared with that she now enjoyed, and where she was so useful to her dear young sister. Love hides all faults, all discrepancies; but could the love felt by either party in this case effect that happy state of blindness?—she was certain it could not. Their happiness must depend on mutual esteem, the surest of all foundations, but the one most difficult to rely on, for slight inequalities might