"I am not very happy in this one," said the Sylphide; "and the stupidity of mamma is enough to provoke a saint."
"Precisely so; you are not suited to one another. Your mother committed one fault in early life--or was it Nature, my dear, in your case?--she ought not to have educated you. You ought not to have been bred up to become the refined and intellectual being you are, surrounded, as I own you are, by those who have not your genius or your refinement. Your place would be to lead in the most brilliant circles, not to follow, and take a second place in any society. I have watched you, Miss Amory: you are ambitious; and your proper sphere is command. You ought to shine; and you never can in this house, I know it. I hope I shall see you in another and a happier one, some day, and the mistress of it."
The Sylphide shrugged her lily shoulders with a look of scorn "Where is the prince, and where is the palace, Major Pendennis?" she said. "I am ready. But there is no romance in the world now, no real affection."
"No, indeed," said the major, with the most sentimental and simple air which he could muster.
"Not that I know any thing about it," said Blanche, casting her eyes down, "except what I have read in novels."
"Of course not," Major Pendennis cried; "how should you, my dear young lady? and novels ain't true, as you remark admirably, and there is no romance left in the world. Begad, I wish I was a young fellow, like my nephew." "And what," continued Miss Amory, musing, "what are the men whom we see about at the balls every night--dancing guardsmen, penniless treasury clerks--boobies! If I had my brother's fortune, I might have such an establishment as you promise me--but with my name, and with my little means, what am I to look to? A country parson, or a barrister in a street near Russell-square, or a captain in a dragoon-regiment, who will take lodgings for me, and come home from the mess tipsy and smelling of smoke like Sir Francis Clavering. That is how we girls are destined to end life. O Major Pendennis, I am sick of London, and of balls, and of young dandies with their chin-tips, and of the insolent great ladies who know us one day and cut us the next--and of the world altogether. I should like to leave it and to go into a convent, that I should. I shall never find any body to understand me. And I live here as much alone in my family and in the world, as if I were in a cell locked up for ever. I wish there were Sisters of Charity here, and that I could be one, and catch the plague, and die of it--I wish to quit the world. I am not very old: but I am tired, I have suffered so much--I've been so disillusionated--I'm weary, I'm weary--O that the Angel of Death would come and beckon me away!"