In weak minds it has generally been remarked that no medium can be maintained.  Where hope holds her dominion she is too buoyant to be accompanied by her anchor; and between her and despair there are no gradations.  Desperate indeed now became the condition of the misjudging pair.  Lady Juliana’s name was not even mentioned in her father’s will, and the General’s marriage rendered his settlements no longer a secret.  In all the horrors of desperation, Henry now found himself daily beset by creditors of every description.  At length the fatal blow came.  Horses, carriages, everything they could call their own, were seized.  The term for which they held the house was expired, and they found themselves on the point of being turned into the street, when Lady Juliana, who had been for two days, as her woman expressed it, out of one fit into another, suddenly recovered strength to signify her desire of being conveyed to her brother’s house.  A hackney coach was procured, into which the hapless victim of her own follies was carried.  Shuddering with disgust, and accompanied by her children and their attendants, she was set down at the noble mansion from which she had fled two years before.

Her brother, whom she fortunately found at home, lolling upon a sofa with a new novel in his hand, received her without any marks of surprise; said those things happened every day; hoped Captain Douglas would contrive to get himself extricated from this slight embarrassment; and informed his sister that she was welcome to occupy her old apartments, which had been lately fitted up for Lady Lindore.  Then ringing the bell, he desired the housekeeper might show Lady Juliana upstairs, and put the children in the nursery; mentioned that he generally dined at eight o’clock; and, nodding to his sister as she quitted the room, returned to his book, as if nothing had occurred to disturb him from it.

In ten minutes after her entrance into Courtland house Lady Juliana had made greater advances in religion and philosophy than she had done in the whole nineteen years of her life; for she not only perceived that “out of evil cometh good,” but was perfectly ready to admit that “all is for the best,” and that “whatever is, is right.”

“How lucky is it for me,” exclaimed she to herself, as she surveyed the splendid suite of apartments that were destined for her accommodation—­“how very fortunate that things have turned out as they have done; that Lady Lindore should have run off, and that the General’s marriage should have taken place just at the time of poor papa’s death “—­and, in short, Lady Juliana set no bounds to her self-gratulations on the happy turn of affairs which had brought about this change in her situation.

To a heart not wholly devoid of feeling, and a mind capable of anything like reflection, the desolate appearance of this magnificent mansion would have excited emotions of a very different nature.  The apartments of the late Earl, with their wide extended doors and windows, sheeted furniture, and air of dreary order, exhibited that waste and chilling aspect which marks the chambers of death; and even Lady Juliana shuddered, she knew not why, as she passed through them.