amidst moss and withered fern-its gurgling rills, blue lakes, and rocks and mountains—all rose to view; and she felt that, even amid fairer scenes and beneath brighter suns, her heart would still turn with fond regret to the land of her birth. CHAPTER LXVII "Wondrous it is to see in diverse mindes SPENSER. BUT UT even the charms of spring were overlooked by Lady Emily in the superior delight she experienced at hearing that the ship in which Edward Douglas was had arrived at Portsmouth; and the intelligence was soon followed by his own arrival at Beech Park. He was received by her with rapture, and by Mary with the tenderest emotion. Lord Courtland was always glad of an addition to the family party; and even Lady Juliana experienced something like emotion as she beheld her son, now the exact image of what his father had been twenty years before. Edward Douglas, was, indeed, a perfect model of youthful beauty, and possessed of all the high spirits and happy insouciance, which can only charm at that early period. He loved his profession, and had already distinguished himself in it. He was handsome, brave, good-hearted, and goodhumoured, but he was not clever; and Mary felt some solicitude as to the permanency of Lady Emily's attachment to him. But Lady Emily, quick-sighted to the defects of the whole world, seemed happily blind to those of her lover; and, when even Mary's spirits were almost exhausted by his noisy rattle, Lady Emily, charmed and exhilarated, entered into all his practical jokes, and boyish frolics, with the greatest delight. She soon perceived what was passing in Mary's mind. "I see perfectly well what you think of my penchant for Edward," said she one day; "I can tell you exactly what was passing in your thoughts just now. You were thinking how strange, how passing strange it is, that I, who am (false modesty avaunt!) certainly cleverer than Edward, should yet be so partial to him, and that my lynx eyes should have failed to discover in him faults, which, with a single glance, I should have detected in others. Now, can't you guess what renders even these very faults so attractive to me?" "The old story, I suppose," said Mary"Love." "Not at all. Love might blind me to his faults altogether, and then my case would be, indeed, hopeless, were I living in the belief that I was loving a piece of perfection--a sort of Apollo Belvidere in mind, as well as in person. Now, so far from that, I could reckon you up a whole catalogue of his faults; and, nevertheless, I love him with my whole heart, faults and all. "In the first place, they are the faults with which I have been familiar from infancy; and therefore they possess a charm (to my shame be it said!) greater than other people's virtues would have to me. They come over my fancy like some snatch of an old nursery song, which one loves to hear in defiance of taste and reason, merely because it is something that carries us back to those days, which, whatever they were in reality, always look bright and sunny in retrospection. In the second place, his faults are real, genuine, natural faults; and, in this age of affectation, how refreshing it is to meet with even a natural fault. I grant you, Edward talks absurdly, and asks questions, à faire dresser les cheveux, of a Mrs. Bluemits. But that amuses me; for his ignorance is not the ignorance of vulgarity or stupidity, but the ignorance of a light head and a merry heart-of one, in short, whose understanding has been at sea when other people's were at school. His bon mots certainly would not do to be printed; but then they make me laugh a great deal more than if they were better, for he is always naïf and original, and I prefer an indifferent original any day to a good copy. How it shocks me to hear people recommending to their children to copy such a person's manners. A copied manner, how insupportable. The servile imitator of a set pattern, how despicable! No, I would rather have Edward in all the freshness of his own faults, than in the faded semblance of another person's proprieties." Mary agreed to the truth of her cousin's observations in some respects, though she could not help thinking, that love had as much to say in her case as in most others; for if it did not blind her to her lover's faults, it certainly made her much more tolerant of them. Edward was in truth, at times, almost provokingly boyish and unthinking, and possessed a flow of animal spirits as inexhaustible as they were sometimes overpowering; but she flattered herself time would subdue them to a more rational tone: hope for it. and she longed for his having the advantages of Colonel Lennox's society-not by way of pattern, as Lady Emily expressed it, but that he might be gradually led to something of more refinement, from holding intercourse with a superior mind. And she obtained her wish sooner than she had dared to That battle was fought which decided the fate of Europe, and turned so many swords into plough-shares; and Mary seemed now touching the pinnacle of happiness, when she saw her lover restored to her. He had gained additional renown in the bloody field of Waterloo; and, more fortunate than others, his military career had terminated both gloriously and happily. If Mary had ever distrusted the reality of his affection, all her doubts were now at an end. She saw she was beloved with all the truth and ardour of a noble and ingenuous mind, too upright to deceive others, too enlightened to deceive itself. All reserve betwixt them was now at an end; and, secure in mutual affection, nothing seemed to oppose itself to their happiness. Colonel Lennox's fortune was small; but, such as it was, it seemed sufficient for all the purposes of rational enjoyment. Both were aware, that wealth is a relative thing, and that the positively rich are not those who have the largest possessions, but those who have the fewest vain or selfish desires to gratify. From these they were happily exempt. Both possessed too many resources in their own minds to require the stimulus of spending money to rouse them into enjoyment, or to give them additional importance in the eyes of the world; and, above all, both were too thoroughly Christian in their principles, to murmur at any sacrifices or privations |