Much must be allowed for an inflammation in the eyes, and something for a rheumatic fever; yet it may seem strange that Lady Clonbrony should be so blind and deaf as neither to see nor hear all this time; that, having lived so long in the world, it should never occur to her that it was rather imprudent to have a young lady, not eighteen, nursing her—­and such a young lady!—­when her son, not one-and-twenty—­and such a son!—­came to visit her daily.  But, so it was.  Lady Clonbrony knew nothing of love—­she had read of it, indeed, in novels, which sometimes for fashion’s sake she had looked at, and over which she had been obliged to doze; but this was only love in books—­love in real life she had never met with—­in the life she led, how should she?  She had heard of its making young people, and old people even, do foolish things; but those were foolish people; and if they were worse than foolish, why it was shocking, and nobody visited them.  But Lady Clonbrony had not, for her own part, the slightest, notion how people could be brought to this pass, nor how anybody out of Bedlam could prefer to a good house, a decent equipage, and a proper establishment, what is called love in a cottage.  As to Colambre, she had too good an opinion of his understanding—­to say nothing of his duty to his family, his pride, his rank, and his being her son—­to let such an idea cross her imagination.  As to her niece; in the first place, she was her niece, and first cousins should never marry, because they form no new connexions to strengthen the family interest, or raise its consequence.  This doctrine her ladyship had repeated for years so often and so dogmatically, that she conceived it to be incontrovertible, and of as full force as any law of the land, or as any moral or religious obligation.  She would as soon have suspected her niece of an intention of stealing her diamond necklace as of purloining Colambre’s heart, or marrying this heir of the house of Clonbrony.

Miss Nugent was so well apprised, and so thoroughly convinced of all this, that she never for one moment allowed herself to think of Lord Colambre as a lover.  Duty, honour, and gratitude—­gratitude, the strong feeling and principle of her mind—­forbade it; she had so prepared and habituated herself to consider him as a person with whom she could not possibly be united that, with perfect ease and simplicity, she behaved towards him exactly as if he was her brother—­not in the equivocating sentimental romance style in which ladies talk of treating men as their brothers, whom they are all the time secretly thinking of and endeavouring to please as lovers—­not using this phrase as a convenient pretence, a safe mode of securing herself from suspicion or scandal, and of enjoying the advantages of confidence and the intimacy of friendship, till the propitious moment, when it should be time to declare or avow the secret of the heart.  No; this young lady was quite above all double-dealing; she had no mental reservation—­no metaphysical subtleties—­but, with plain, unsophisticated morality, in good faith and simple truth, acted as she professed, thought what she said, and was that which she seemed to be.