inity was a new beauty; the
whole world raving of her. Egremont also advanced. The Lady Arabella
was not only beautiful: she was clever, fascinating. Her presence was
inspiration; at least for Egremont. She condescended to be pleased
by him: she signalized him by her notice; their names were mentioned
together. Egremont indulged in flattering dreams. He regretted he had
not pursued a profession: he regretted he had impaired his slender
patrimony; thought of love in a cottage, and renting a manor; thought
of living a good deal with his mother, and a little with his brother;
thought of the law and the church; thought once of New Zealand. The
favourite of nature and of fashion, this was the first time in the life
of Egremont, that he had been made conscious that there was something in
his position which, with all its superficial brilliancy, might prepare
for him, when youth had fled and the blaze of society grown dim, a drear
and bitter lot.

He was roused from his reveries by a painful change in the demeanour of
his adored. The mother of the Lady Arabella was alarmed. She liked
her daughter to be admired even by younger sons when they were
distinguished, but only at a distance. Mr Egremont's name had been
mentioned too often. It had appeared coupled with her daughters, even in
a Sunday paper. The most decisive measures were requisite, and they were
taken. Still smiling when they met, still kind when they conversed, it
seemed, by some magic dexterity which even baffled Egremont, that their
meetings every day grew rarer, and their opportunities for conversation
less frequent. At the end of the season, the Lady Arabella selected from
a crowd of admirers equally qualified, a young peer of great estate, and
of the "old nobility," a circumstance which, as her grandfather had only
been an East India director, was very gratifying to the bride.

This unfortunate passion of Charles Egremont, and its mortifying
circumstances and consequences, was just that earliest shock in one's
life which occurs to all of us; which first makes us think. We have all
experienced that disheartening catastrophe, when the illusions first
vanish; and our balked imagination, or our mortified vanity, first
intimates to us that we are neither infallible nor irresistible. Happily
'tis the season of youth for which the first lessons of experience are
destined; and bitter and intolerable as is the first blight of our fresh
feelings, the sanguine impulse of e