Page:Lady Anne Granard 2.pdf/245

Lady Anne, which was essentially distinct from her own, by which she measured it. Shakespeare has given us several fools, but no two of them are alike; each was the product of "an imagination all compact," which gave to each his own identity, despite the grand characteristic. And thus did these ladies differ from each other, though both were pretty generally classed by their friends "artful women." So far as Lady Anne was such, she had been made by circumstance and observation, for both nature and education had stamped her as too proud and self-sufficient to stoop for the purpose of obtaining that which she had a right to seize. In the day of her power she was vain, extravagant, unfeeling, and intensely selfish; but her poverty alone taught her as much of cunning as her necessities exacted, or her difficulties compelled, but no more. On the contrary, the countess was cunning by nature, and had so cultivated her faculties, that the "charming simplicity of her character" was constantly the theme of strangers previous to her marriage, and had indeed been the sole cause of it, for the earl, worn out by the passions and impulses, the abilities and sensibilities of his own heart and its errors, the hearts of his preceding wives and their errors, sought only in her the simplicity he could never suspect, and the quiet kindness he had no cause to dread. He was only beginning to find that, as the perfection of art is to conceal art, his lady was so accomplished a person, he might rely as safely on