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ROMANCE AND REALITY.
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try should be held so very indispensable a requisite for excellence; but really people talk of it as if it were a virtue, and as if an opposite opinion was, to say the least of it, very immoral.

Lady Mandeville's was essentially a town nature. She was born to what she was fit for; she was originally meant to be ornamental, rather than useful. In short, she exactly resembled a plume of ostrich feathers, or a blond dress; now these are best worn in the metropolis. The inference from all this is, that though Lord Mandeville often talked of settling at his country seat, he never actually settled.

The walk was ended, for the domains were not very extensive, and the gentlemen returned home. They afterwards rode out; and Emily felt very happy in the mere consciousness that the cavalier at her bridle rein was Edward Lorraine.

That vague, self-relying, uncalculating happiness, how delicious it is—that which we never know but once, and which can have but one object! Emily quite forgot how wretched she had been. She recalled not the once agony of his presence—the despondency in his absence. She never looked at him; she scarce spoke, but