they belonged. The modern race
of the Howards and the Cliffords, the Talbots, the Arundels, and the
Jerninghams, were not unworthy of their proud progenitors. Miss Dacre
observed with respect, and assuredly with sympathy, the mild
dignity, the noble patience, the proud humility, the calm hope, the
uncompromising courage, with which her father and his friends sustained
their oppression and lived as proscribed in the realm which they had
created. Yet her lively fancy and gay spirit found less to admire in the
feelings which influenced these families in their intercourse with the
world, which induced them to foster but slight intimacies out of the
pale of the proscribed, and which tinged their domestic life with
that formal and gloomy colouring which ever accompanies a monotonous
existence. Her disposition told her that all this affected
non-interference with the business of society might be politic, but
assuredly was not pleasant; her quick sense whispered to her it was
unwise, and that it retarded, not advanced, the great result in which
her sanguine temper dared often to indulge. Under any circumstances,
it did not appear to her to be wisdom to second the efforts of their
oppressors for their degradation or their misery, and to seek no
consolation in the amiable feelings of their fellow-creatures for the
stern rigour of their unsocial government. But, independently of all
general principles, Miss Dacre could not but believe that it was
the duty of the Catholic gentry to mix more with that world which so
misconceived their spirit. Proud in her conscious knowledge of
their exalted virtues, she felt that they had only to be known to be
recognised as the worthy leaders of that nation which they had so often
saved and never betrayed.

She did not conceal her opinions from the circle in which they had grown
up. All the young members were her disciples, and were decidedly of
opinion that if the House of Lords would but listen to May Dacre,
emancipation would be a settled thing. Her logic would have destroyed
Lord Liverpool's arguments; her wit extinguished Lord Eldon's jokes.
But the elder members only shed a solemn smile, and blessed May Dacre's
shining eyes and sanguine spirit.

Her greatest supporter was Mrs. Dallington Vere. This lady was a distant
relation of Mr. Dacre. At seventeen she, herself a Catholic, had married
Mr. Dallington Vere, of Dallington House, a Catholic gentleman of
considerable fortune, whose age rese