41

CHAP. IV.

"By land what strife, what plots of secret guile,
How many a wound from many a treacherous smile!
O where shall man escape his numerous foes,
And rest his weary head in safe repose!"

CAMOENS.

LADY ATHOL, Secure from the dangers which had lately threatened her, now seemed to exist only in the enjoyment of the present. She possessed herself of a higher grade in the republic of the belles-lettres, by the foreign information she had collected. Assured of present éclat, and suffering herself to calculate on her future success as a certainty, she regained all that brilliance which had been accustomed to fascinate and delight. She even found pleasure in befriending Edith Avondel: in the midst of all her affected consciousness of superiority, she

had felt herself thrown at a distance from Edith, incompatible with it. She could not succeed in depressing the tone of Miss Avondel's mind below its usual pitch; she could not displace that calmness which always secured self-possession. Her bitterest sarcasms could not embarrass her, her pointed contempt could not humiliate her; with unblemished majesty she passed on, and the arrows of her assailants had not the power to draw one drop of the celestial ichor of genius. The only means by which Lady Athol could elevate herself to that ostensible superiority over Edith which she coveted the more it seemed placed beyond her attainment, was by affecting to patronize her. This was only a temporary enjoyment; because none better than Edith Avondel herself, knew how decided were her claims to literary consideration; and it mattered little to Lady Athol, that all the world considered her the efficient means of eliciting that genius which it admired, if the possessor of it were not also blinded by the

delusion. Edith's success in her literary career had been as rapid as it was brilliant; and she had not enjoyed Lady Athol's protection until it had attained a very decided height. She knew, that even if that protection were withdrawn, an éclat which by no means depended on it, would still exist. And now, less than ever, she valued the applause or the admiration of the world; for

"The fame she follow'd, and the fame she found,
Heal'd not her heart's immedicable wound;
Admired, applauded, crown'd where'er she roved,
Still she was homeless, friendless, unbelov'd.
All else that breath'd below the circling sky
Were link'd to earth by some endearing tie;
She only, like the ocean weed uptorn,
And loose along the world of waters borne,
Was cast, companionless, from wave to wave,
On life's rough sea, and there was none to save."

That protection which Lady Athol afforded must be accepted precisely in the shape she chose it should be received. Her caprices, her liability to change, rendered it always uncertain, and often intolerable. Edith's coldness, and the pe

culiarity of her disposition, preserved her from the frequent attacks which would have been made on the patience of another less extraordinary. But even her time of trial was to come; Lady Athol was to drive from beneath her roof, her whom interest imperiously demanded she should keep there.

Captain Fitzelm was a daily visitor at Lady Athol's. One morning he was conversing with the Countess, criticising the merits of a favourite actress, and her enunciation of that speech uttered by Lady Macbeth,

"Infirm of purpose!

Give me the daggers: The sleeping, and the dead,
Are but as pictures: 'tis the eye of childhood

That fears a painted devil. If he do bleed,
I'll gild the faces of the grooms withal,
For it must seem their guilt."

It happened that Lady Athol disputed the accuracy of Captain Fitzelm's judgment on the correct accentuation of this passage. As usual, neither of the opponents was convinced by the other; and

after having prosecuted the controversy with all the critical acumen imaginable, they concluded it, as is frequently the case in such affairs, by referring the matter to the decision of a third person-of Edith Avondel.

Edith read the disputed speech aloud. Lady Athol and Captain Fitzelm, impressed at once by the same sentiment, instead of requesting her judgment, laid passages before her, and listened with that deep attention which betokened consummate admiration, until she came to that climax of contempt and indignątion:

"0 proper stuff!

This is the very painting of your fear!

This is the air-drawn dagger, which you said
Led you to Duncan. O, these flaws and starts
(Impostors to true fear) would well become
A woman's story, at a winter's fire,

Authoriz'd by her grandam. Shame itself!
Why do you make such faces? When all's done,
You look but on a stool!"

Lady Athol laid her hand on the page; she looked up in the countenance of