I now took my departure, having some poor cottagers to visit. When I came back, I saw by the thoughtful brow and flushed cheek of both, that their conversation had been of a very interesting nature; and I also saw that there was an air of confiding intimacy between them, which I never expected to see between two persons so little accordant in habits and sentiments. But every human being has a capacity for good as well as evil, and the great difference in us all results chiefly, I believe, from the favourable or unfavourable circumstances in which we are placed. Lord Charles had been so circumstanced, that his capacity for evil alone had been cultivated; and till he knew my mother and myself, he had never met in women any other description of companions than those whom he courted, conquered, and despised,--and those whose rigid morals and disagreeable manners threw him haughtily at a distance, and made him hate virtue for their sakes. But now, trusted, noticed, liked by women of a different kind, his good feelings were awakened; and while with us, he really was the amiable being which he might, differently situated, have always been. "I love to be with you," said he to us: "your influence is so beneficial over me, and you wrap me in such a pleasing illusion! for while I am with you I fancy myself as good as you are: but when I go away, I shall be just as bad again.--Well; have you nothing to say in reply? How disappointed I am! for I thought you would in mercy have exclaimed, 'Then stay here for ever!' Would I could!" And indeed, when he did go, I missed him.--But to return to the place whence I digressed. Pendarves came home time enough to take a ride with Lord Charles, but he took care to let him see that he expected more attention from him. That evening he challenged my husband to picquet; and having won back nearly the whole of what he had lost, positively declined playing any more: and, much to Seymour's vexation, he would not play again while he staid. The second night's performances at Oswald Lodge now took place; but though Lord Charles staid to be present at them, he could not help expressing his astonishment to me, when alone, that a modest, respectable gentlewoman like myself should ever have joined in them, and that my husband should have permitted it. "It is very well for these fiddling, frolicking, fun-hunting Oswalds," said he, "to fill their house with persons and things of this sort, and rant and roar, and kick and jump, and make fools and tumblers of themselves and such of their guests as like it: but never did I expect to see the dignified and retiring Helen Pendarves exhibiting her person on a stage, and levelling herself to a Lady Martindale. As your friend, your adoring friend, I tell you, that such an exhibition degrades you." "It would do so were it my choice, but it is my necessity; and the fulfilment of a painful duty exalts rather than degrades." "Duty!" "Yes; my husband required me to act, and I obeyed."