This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
ROMANCE AND REALITY.
153

racter. Moreover Lady Mandeville took a personal interest in her favourite. The merit we are the first to discover, almost seems as if it were our own, and that, like a newly-found country, it was to bear the name of the first finder.

A bustle was now heard in the hall; the door was thrown open; Mr. Morland lost his nap, and Emily her needle, in the surprise of Lord Mandeville's entrance with Mr. Lorraine. Timidity does as much towards concealing, as resolution does towards repressing, emotion. Lady Mandeville was the only one of the party who observed that Emily's usual blush deepened with twofold crimson—that her hand trembled as she eagerly resumed her work, to the great danger of the symmetry necessary to be observed in the red cross of St. George.

It is worth while to leave home, if it were only to enjoy being of so much consequence on your return. Lord Mandeville arrived with all the interest of absence and news. A Russian prince, whose carriage was lined with sable, and whose vehicle and self had been seized at the custom-house, he having refused to quit his shelter, on the plea of dreading the irregularity of our atmosphere;—the breaking off