The following day Mrs. Downe Wright arrived with her son, evidently primed for falling in love at first sight.  He was a very handsome young man, gentle, and rather pleasing in his manners; and Mary, to whom his intentions were not so palpable, thought him by no means deserving of the contempt her cousin had expressed for him.

“Well!” cried Lady Emily, after they were gone, “the plot begins to thicken; lovers begin to pour in, but all for Mary; how mortifying to you and me, Adelaide!  At this rate we shall have nothing to boast of in the way of disinterested attachment nobody refused!—­nothing renounced!  By-and-bye Edward will be reckoned a very good match for me,and you will be thought greatly married if you succeed in securing Lindore—­poor Lord Lindore, as it seems that wretch Placid calls him.”

Adelaide heard all her cousin’s taunts in silence and with apparent coolness; but they rankled deep in a heart already festering with pride, envy, and ambition.  The thoughts of her sister—­and that sister so inferior to herself—­attaining a more splendid alliance, was not to be endured.  True, she loved Lord Lindore, and imagined herself beloved in return; but even that was not sufficient to satisfy the craving passions of a perverted mind.  She did not, indeed, attach implicit belief to all that her cousin said on the subject; but she was provoked and irritated at the mere supposition of such a thing being possible; for it is not merely the jealous whose happiness is the sport of trifles light as air—­every evil thought, every unamiable feeling, bears about with it the bane of that enjoyment after which it vainly aspires.

Mary felt the increasing ill-humour which this subject drew upon her, without being able to penetrate the cause of it; but she saw that it was displeasing to her mother and sister, and that was sufficient to make her wish to put a stop to it.  She therefore earnestly entreated Lady Emily to end the joke.

“Excuse me,” replied her Ladyship, “I shall do no such thing.  In the first place, there happens to be no joke in the matter.  I’m certain, seriously certain, or certainly serious, which you like, that you may be Duchess of Altamont, if you please.  It could be no common admiration that prompted his Grace to an original and spontaneous effusion of it.  I have met with him before, and never suspected that he had an innate idea in his head.  I certainly never heard him utter anything half so brilliant before—­it seemed quite like the effect of inspiration.”

“But I cannot conceive, even were it as you say, why my mother should be so displeased about it.  She surely cannot suppose me so silly as to be elated by the unmeaning admiration of anyone, or so meanly aspiring as to marry a man I could not love, merely because he is a Duke.  She was incapable of such a thing herself, she cannot then suspect me.”