ve, regarding her in the light of friendship only,
beheld her as the most perfect model for her sex. Lord Frederick on
first seeing her was struck with her beauty, and Miss Milner apprehended
she had introduced a rival; but he had not seen her three times, before
he called her "The most insufferable of Heaven's creatures," and vowed
there was more charming variation in the plain features of Miss
Woodley.
Miss Milner had a heart affectionate to her own sex, even where she saw
them in possession of superior charms; but whether from the spirit of
contradiction, from feeling herself more than ordinarily offended by her
guardian's praise of this lady, or that there was a reserve in Miss
Fenton that did not accord with her own frank and ingenuous disposition,
so as to engage her esteem, certain it is that she took infinite
satisfaction in hearing her beauty and virtues depreciated or turned
into ridicule, particularly if Mr. Dorriforth was present. This was
painful to him upon many accounts; perhaps an anxiety for his ward's
conduct was not among the least; and whenever the circumstance occurred,
he could with difficulty restrain his anger. Miss Fenton was not only a
person whose amiable qualities he admired, but she was soon to be allied
to him by her marriage with his nearest relation, Lord Elmwood, a young
nobleman whom he sincerely loved.
Lord Elmwood had discovered all that beauty in Miss Fenton which every
common observer could not but see. The charms of her mind and of her
fortune had been pointed out by his tutor; and the utility of the
marriage, in perfect submission to his precepts, he never permitted
himself to question.
This preceptor held with a magisterial power the government of his
pupil's passions; nay, governed them so entirely, that no one could
perceive (nor did the young Lord himself know) that he had any.
This rigid monitor and friend was a Mr. Sandford, bred a Jesuit in the
same college at which Dorriforth had since been educated, but before his
time the order was compelled to take another name. Sandford had been the
tutor of Dorriforth as well as of his cousin, Lord Elmwood, and by this
double tie seemed now entailed upon the family. As a Jesuit, he was
consequently a man of learning; possessed of steadiness to accomplish
the end of any design once meditated, and of sagacity to direct the
conduct of men more powerful, but less ingenious, than himself. The
young Earl, accustomed in his infancy t
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