Page:Romance & Reality 2.pdf/88

86 Emily had yet to learn, that indifference is but another of the illusions of youth: there is a period in our life before we know that enjoyment is a necessity—that, if the sweet cup of pleasure palls, the desire for it fades too—that employments deepen into duties—and that, while we smile, ay, and sigh too, over the many vain dreams we have coloured, and the many vain hopes we have cherished—a period of re-action, whose lassitude we have all felt:—this influence was now upon Emily. She was young for such a feeling—and youth made the knowledge more bitter. "I do not think," said a welcome though unexpected visitor, in the shape of Mr. Morland, "that Miss Arundel's roses are so blooming in the country as they were in town. Pray, young lady, what have you done with your allegiance to the house of Lancaster?" "What!" exclaimed Lady Mandeville, "Mr. Morland among the rural philosophers, who talk of health as if it grew upon the hawthorns?" "My dear Ellen," said her husband, who had his full share of love for the divers species of slaughtering,

that make up the rustic code of gentlemanlike