I do hate!'
cried she, clasping her hands, and expressing hatred with all her soul
and with all her strength. 'I detest that Lady de Cresey to such a
degree, that, to purchase the pleasure of making her feel the pangs of
jealousy for one hour, look, I would this moment lay down this finger
and let it be cut off.'

The face, the whole figure of Lady Isabel at this moment appeared to
Lord Colambre suddenly metamorphosed; instead of the soft, gentle,
amiable female, all sweet charity and tender sympathy, formed to love
and to be loved, he beheld one possessed and convulsed by an evil
spirit--her beauty, if beauty it could be called, the beauty of a fiend.
Some ejaculation, which he unconsciously uttered, made Lady Isabel
start. She saw him--saw the expression of his countenance, and knew that
all was over.

Lord Colambre, to the utter astonishment and disappointment of Lady
Dashfort, and to the still greater mortification of Lady Isabel,
announced this night that it was necessary he should immediately pursue
his tour in Ireland. We pass over all the castles in the air which the
young ladies of the family had built, and which now fell to the ground.
We pass all the civil speeches of Lord and Lady Killpatrick; all the
vehement remonstrances of Lady Dashfort; and the vain sighs of Lady
Isabel, To the last moment Lady Dashfort said--

'He will not go.'

But he went; and, when he was gone, Lady Dashfort exclaimed, 'That man
has escaped from me.' And after a pause, turning to her daughter, she,
in the most taunting and contemptuous terms, reproached her as the cause
of this failure, concluding by a declaration that she must in future
manage her own affairs, and had best settle her mind to marry Heathcock,
since every one else was too wise to think of her.

Lady Isabel of course retorted. But we leave this amiable mother and
daughter to recriminate in appropriate terms, and we follow our hero,
rejoiced that he has been disentangled from their snares. Those who
have never been in similar peril will wonder much that he did not escape
sooner; those who have ever been in like danger will wonder more that
he escaped at all. Those who are best acquainted with the heart or
imagination of man will be most ready to acknowledge that the combined
charms of wit, beauty, and flattery, may, for a time, suspend the action
of right reason in the mind of the greatest philosopher, or operate
against the resolutions of the greatest of heroes.