deed, in novels, which sometimes
for fashion's sake she had looked at, and over which she had been
obliged to doze; but this was only love in books--love in real life she
had never met with--in the life she led, how should she? She had heard
of its making young people, and old people even, do foolish things; but
those were foolish people; and if they were worse than foolish, why it
was shocking, and nobody visited them. But Lady Clonbrony had not, for
her own part, the slightest, notion how people could be brought to this
pass, nor how anybody out of Bedlam could prefer to a good house, a
decent equipage, and a proper establishment, what is called love in
a cottage. As to Colambre, she had too good an opinion of his
understanding--to say nothing of his duty to his family, his pride, his
rank, and his being her son--to let such an idea cross her imagination.
As to her niece; in the first place, she was her niece, and first
cousins should never marry, because they form no new connexions to
strengthen the family interest, or raise its consequence. This doctrine
her ladyship had repeated for years so often and so dogmatically, that
she conceived it to be incontrovertible, and of as full force as any law
of the land, or as any moral or religious obligation. She would as
soon have suspected her niece of an intention of stealing her diamond
necklace as of purloining Colambre's heart, or marrying this heir of the
house of Clonbrony.

Miss Nugent was so well apprised, and so thoroughly convinced of all
this, that she never for one moment allowed herself to think of Lord
Colambre as a lover. Duty, honour, and gratitude--gratitude, the strong
feeling and principle of her mind--forbade it; she had so prepared and
habituated herself to consider him as a person with whom she could not
possibly be united that, with perfect ease and simplicity, she behaved
towards him exactly as if he was her brother--not in the equivocating
sentimental romance style in which ladies talk of treating men as
their brothers, whom they are all the time secretly thinking of and
endeavouring to please as lovers--not using this phrase as a convenient
pretence, a safe mode of securing herself from suspicion or scandal, and
of enjoying the advantages of confidence and the intimacy of friendship,
till the propitious moment, when it should be time to declare or
avow THE SECRET OF THE HEART. No; this young lady was quite above
all double-dealing; she had no mental