And now Fanny did mope, and Grey Abbey was triste [43] indeed.  Griffiths in my lady’s boudoir rolled and unrolled those huge white bundles of mysterious fleecy hosiery with more than usually slow and unbroken perseverance.  My lady herself bewailed the fermentation among the jam-pots with a voice that did more than whine, it was almost funereal.  As my lord went from breakfast-room to book-room, from book-room to dressing-room, and from dressing-room to dining-room, his footsteps creaked with a sound more deadly than that of a death-watch.  The book-room itself had caught a darker gloom; the backs of the books seemed to have lost their gilding, and the mahogany furniture its French polish.  There, like a god, Lord Cashel sate alone, throned amid clouds of awful dulness, ruling the world of nothingness around by the silent solemnity of his inertia.

     [FOOTNOTE 43:  triste—­(French) sad, mournful, dull, dreary]

Lady Selina was always useful, but with a solid, slow activity, a dignified intensity of heavy perseverance, which made her perhaps more intolerable than her father.  She was like some old coaches which we remember—­very sure, very respectable; but so tedious, so monotonous, so heavy in their motion, that a man with a spark of mercury in his composition would prefer any danger from a faster vehicle to their horrid, weary, murderous, slow security.  Lady Selina from day to day performed her duties in a most uncompromising manner; she knew what was due to her position, and from it, and exacted and performed accordingly with a stiff, steady propriety which made her an awful if not a hateful creature.  One of her daily duties, and one for the performance of which she had unfortunately ample opportunity, was the consolation of Fanny under her troubles.  Poor Fanny! how great an aggravation was this to her other miseries!  For a considerable time Lady Selma had known nothing of the true cause of Fanny’s gloom; for though the two cousins were good friends, as far as Lady Selina was capable of admitting so human a frailty as friendship, still Fanny could not bring herself to make a confidante of her.  Her kind, stupid, unpretending old aunt was a much better person to talk to, even though she did arch her eyebrows, and shake her head when Lord Ballindine’s name was mentioned, and assure her niece that though she had always liked him herself, he could not be good for much, because Lord Kilcullen had said so.  But Fanny could not well dissemble; she was tormented by Lady Selina’s condolements, and recommendations of Gibbon, her encomiums on industry, and anathemas against idleness; she was so often reminded that weeping would not bring back her brother, nor inactive reflection make his fate less certain, that at last she made her monitor understand that it was about Lord Ballindine’s fate that she was anxious, and that it was his coming back which might be effected by weeping—­or other measures.