It may easily be imagined the good sense of the mother did not tend to soothe the irritated feelings of the daughter.  Lady Juliana was indeed quite as much exasperated as the Duchess at these obstacles thrown in the way of her pleasures, and the more so as she could not quite clearly comprehend them.  The good-nature of her husband and the easy indolence of her brother even her folly had enabled her, on many occasions, to get the better of; but the obstinacy of her son-in-law was invincible to all her arts.  She could therefore only wonder to the Duchess how she could not manage to get the better of the Duke’s prejudices against balls and concerts and masquerades.  It was so excessively ridiculous, so perfectly foolish, not to do as other people did; and there was the Duchess of Ryston gave Sunday concerts, and Lady Oakham saw masks, and even old ugly Lady Loddon had a ball, and the Prince at it!  How vastly provoking! how unreasonable in a man of the Duke’s years to expect a girl like Adelaide to conform to all his old-fashioned notions!  And then she would wisely appeal to Lord Lindore whether it was not too absurd in the Duke to interfere with the Duchess’s arrangements.

Lord Lindore was a frequent visitor at Altamont House; for the Duke, satisfied with his having been once refused, was no wise jealous of him; and Lord Lindore was too quiet and refined in his attentions to excite the attention of anyone so stupid and obtuse.  It was not the least of the Duchess’s mortifications to be constantly contrasting her former lover—­elegant, captivating, and spirituel—­with her husband, awkward, insipid, and dull, as the fat weed that rots on Lethe’s shore.  Lord Lindore was indeed the most admired man in London, celebrated for his conquests, his horses, his elegance, manner, dress; in short, in everything he gave the tone.  But he had too much taste to carry anything to extreme; and in the midst of incense, and adulation, and imitation, he still retained that simple unostentatious elegance that marks the man of real fashion—­the man who feels his own consequence, independent of all extraneous modes or fleeting fashions.

There is, perhaps, nothing so imposing, nothing that carries a greater sway over a mind of any refinement, than simplicity, when we feel assured that it springs from a genuine contempt of show and ostentation.  Lord Lindore was aware of this, and he did not attempt to vie with the Duke of Altamont in the splendour of his equipage, the richness of his liveries, the number of his attendants, or any of those previous attractions attractions; on the contrary, everything belonging to him was of the plainest description; and, except in the beauty of his horses, he seemed to scorn every species of extravagance; but then he rode with so much elegance, he drove his curricle with such graceful ease, as formed a striking contrast to the formal Duke, sitting bolt-upright in his state chariot, chapeau bras, and star; and the Duchess