Ellen, however, was not so easily misled: her natural penetration detected the fallacy; and all the shafts of Lady Meredith's ridicule fell, by her, unheeded.
On the way home, Lady Juliana inveighed bitterly against the flirting manners and ill-judged raillery of Lady Meredith, who, she said, instead of improving as she grew older, was every year worse and worse, and was enough to spoil the conduct of a whole nation of women.
"Pray, my dear," said she, "don't you be led by her nonsense: I hope she will not persuade you to follow her example. Indeed, nephew, I wondered at you for placing that odd, wild-looking young De Montfort next my niece: he does not please me at all."
In short, the old lady was so thoroughly out of humour, that they were very glad to set her down at her own house.
Two or three days after this, Lord de Montfort took leave of the St. Aubyns, before he left London, on his way with a party of young men to see Oxford and Cambridge, and afterwards to go to the Lakes, not meaning to be again in London till September. He carried with him the most exalted opinion of Lady St. Aubyn, but he thought of her rather as an angel than a woman, and was devoted to her with a purity of attachment inconceivable by the worldly-minded.
She sees once more those lovely plains expand, Where the first flow'ret lured her infant hand. No where she thinks the sun so mildly gleams, As on the banks where first she drank its beams: So green no other mead, so smiles no other land! Thou little spot, where first I suck'd the light, Thou witness of my earliest smile and tear-- Loved haunt!
Nothing more of any moment occurred during the stay of Lord and Lady St. Aubyn in London, for De Montfort's departure, and the perfect attachment which subsisted between the noble pair, silenced those tongues, and stopped those remarks, which Edmund's too obvious admiration had prepared to annoy Lady St. Aubyn.
They left London early in April, and spent the month of May at St. Aubyn's, being old-fashioned and _tasteless_ enough not to find any pleasure in broiling through the hot months in the metropolis, and leaving the
"Opening lawns, deep glooms, and airy summits,"
of their own domain untenanted in the most attractive season of the year.