regulate the destinies of their species, even in so slight a point as an
hour's amusement, without rare powers. There is no greater sin than to
be _trop prononcee_. A want of tact is worse than a want of virtue.
Some women, it is said, work on pretty well against the tide without the
last: I never knew one who did not sink who ever dared to sail without
the first.

Loud when they should be low, quoting the wrong person, talking on
the wrong subject, teasing with notice, excruciating with attentions,
disturbing a tete-a-tete in order to make up a dance; wasting eloquence
in persuading a man to participate in amusement whose reputation depends
on his social sullenness; exacting homage with a restless eye, and
not permitting the least worthy knot to be untwined without their
divinityships' interference; patronising the meek, anticipating the
slow, intoxicated with compliment, plastering with praise, that you in
return may gild with flattery; in short, energetic without elegance,
active without grace, and loquacious without wit; mistaking bustle
for style, raillery for badinage, and noise for gaiety, these are the
characters who mar the very career they think they are creating, and who
exercise a fatal influence on the destinies of all those who have the
misfortune to be connected with them.

Not one of these was she, the lady of our tale. There was a quiet
dignity lurking even under her easiest words and actions which made you
feel her notice a compliment: there was a fascination in her calm smile
and in her sunlit eye which made her invitation to amusement itself
a pleasure. If you refused, you were not pressed, but left to that
isolation which you appeared to admire; if you assented, you were
rewarded with a word which made you feel how sweet was such society!
Her invention never flagged, her gaiety never ceased; yet both were
spontaneous, and often were unobserved. All felt amused, and all were
unconsciously her agents. Her word and her example seemed, each instant,
to call forth from her companions new accomplishments, new graces, new
sources of joy and of delight. All were surprised that they were so
agreeable.

CHAPTER X.

_Love's Young Dream_

MORNING came, and the great majority of the gentlemen rose early as
Aurora. The chase is the favourite pastime of man and boy; yet some
preferred plundering their host's preserves, by which means their
slumbers were not so brief and their breakfast less distur