e speaker as she concluded;
perhaps, at that solitary moment, my heart was unfaithful to Ellen; but
the infidelity passed away like the breath from the mirror. Coxcomb as
I was, I knew well how passionless was the interest expressed for me.
Libertine as I had been, I knew, also, how pure may be the friendship of
a woman, provided she loves another.

I thanked Lady Roseville, warmly, for her opinion, "Perhaps," I added,
"dared I solicit your advice, you would not find me wholly undeserving
of your esteem."

"My advice," answered Lady Roseville, "would be, indeed, worse than
useless, were it not regulated by a certain knowledge which, perhaps,
you do not possess. You seem surprised. Eh bien; listen to me--are
you not in no small degree lie with Lord Dawton?--do you not expect
something from him worthy of your rank and merit?"

"You do, indeed, surprise me," said I. "However close my connection with
Lord Dawton may be, I thought it much more secret than it appears to
be. However, I own that I have a right to expect from Lord Dawton,
not, perhaps, a recompense of service, but, at least, a fulfilment of
promises. In this expectation I begin to believe I shall be deceived."

"You will!" answered Lady Roseville. "Bend your head lower--the walls
have ears. You have a friend, an unwearied and earnest friend, with
those now in power; directly he heard that Mr. V--was promised the
borough, which he knew had been long engaged to you, he went straight to
Lord Dawton. He found him with Lord Clandonald; however, he opened the
matter immediately. He spoke with great warmth of your claims--he did
more--he incorporated them with his own, which are of no mean order, and
asked no other recompense for himself than the fulfilment of a long
made promise to you. Dawton was greatly confused, and Lord Clandonald
replied, for him, that certainly there was no denying your talents--that
they were very great--that you had, unquestionably, been of much service
to their party, and that, consequently, it must be politic to attach you
to their interests; but that there was a certain fierte, and assumption,
and he might say (mark the climax) independence about you, which could
not but be highly displeasing in one so young; moreover, that it was
impossible to trust to you--that you pledged yourself to no party--that
you spoke only of conditions and terms--that you treated the proposal
of placing you in parliament rather as a matter of favour on your pa