s upon
his mother and his family had not been made SOTTO VOCE.

'Lady Langdale's carriage stops the way!' Lord Colambre made no offer of
his services, notwithstanding a look from his mother. Incapable of the
meanness of voluntarily listening to a conversation not intended for him
to hear, he had, however, been compelled, by the pressure of the crowd,
to remain a few minutes stationary, where he could not avoid hearing the
remarks of the fashionable friends. Disdaining dissimulation, he made no
attempt to conceal his displeasure. Perhaps his vexation was increased
by his consciousness that there was some mixture of truth in their
sarcasms. He was sensible that his mother, in some points--her manners,
for instance--was obvious to ridicule and satire. In Lady Clonbrony's
address there was a mixture of constraint, affectation, and indecision,
unusual in a person of her birth, rank, and knowledge of the world. A
natural and unnatural manner seemed struggling in all her gestures,
and in every syllable that she articulated--a naturally free, familiar,
good-natured, precipitate, Irish manner, had been schooled, and schooled
late in life, into a sober, cold, still, stiff deportment, which she
mistook for English. A strong, Hibernian accent, she had, with infinite
difficulty, changed into an English tone. Mistaking reverse of wrong for
right, she caricatured the English pronunciation; and the extraordinary
precision of her London phraseology betrayed her not to be a Londoner,
as the man, who strove to pass for an Athenian, was detected by his
Attic dialect. Not aware of her real danger, Lady Clonbrony was, on
the opposite side, in continual apprehension, every time she opened
her lips, lest some treacherous A or E, some strong R, some puzzling
aspirate, or non-aspirate, some unguarded note, interrogative or
expostulatory, should betray her to be an Irishwoman. Mrs. Dareville
had, in her mimickry, perhaps a little exaggerated as to the TEEBLES
and CHEERS, but still the general likeness of the representation of Lady
Clonbrony was strong enough to strike and vex her son. He had now, for
the first time, an opportunity of judging of the estimation in which his
mother and his family were held by certain leaders of the ton, of whom,
in her letters, she had spoken so much, and into whose society, or
rather into whose parties, she had been admitted. He saw that the
renegade cowardice, with which she denied, abjured, and reviled her own
co