Page:Precaution; a novel by Cooper, James Fenimore.djvu/98

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following day brought a large party of the military élégants to the Hall, in acceptance of the baronet's hospitable invitation to dinner. Lady Moseley was delighted so long as her husband's or her children's interest had demanded a sacrifice of her love of society it had been made without a sigh, almost without a thought. The ties of affinity in her were sacred; and to the happiness, the comfort of those in whom she felt an interest, there were few sacrifices of her own propensities she would not cheerfully have made: it was this very love of her offspring that made her anxious to dispose of her daughters in wedlock. Her own marriage had been so happy that she naturally concluded it the state most likely to insure the happiness of her children; and with Lady Moseley as with thousands of others, who, averse or unequal to the labors of investigation, jump to conclusions over the long line of connecting reasons, marriage was marriage, a husband was a husband. It is true there were certain indispensables, without which the formation of a connection was a thing she considered not within the bounds of nature. There must be fitness in fortune, in condition, in education, and manners; there must be no glaring evil, although she did not ask for positive good. A professor of religion herself, had any one told her it was a duty of her calling to guard against a connection with any but a Christian for her girls, she would have wondered at the ignorance that would embarrass the married state, with feelings exclusively belonging to the individual. Had any one told her it were possible to give her child to any but a gentleman, she would have wondered at the want of feeling that could devote the softness of Jane or Emily to the association with rudeness or