The accomplishment of her favourite views being thus disappointed, or at least deferred, Lady Margaret resolved to return to Italy, and there to seek for Viviani. Her brother, however, entreated her to remain with him. He invited his friends, his relations, his neighbours. Balls and festivities once more enlivened the castle: it seemed his desire to raze every trace of sorrow from the memory of his child; and to conceal the ravages of death under the appearance at least of wild and unceasing gaiety.—The brilliant _fêtes_, and the magnificence of the Duke of Altamonte and his sister, became the constant theme of admiration; from far, from near, fashion and folly poured forth their victims to grace and to enjoy them; and Lord and Lady Dartford naturally found their place amidst the various and general assemblage. To see Lord Dartford again, to triumph over his falsehood, to win him from an innocent confiding wife, and then betray him at the moment in which he fancied himself secure, this vengeance was yet wanting to satisfy the restless fever of Lady Margaret’s mind; and the contemplation of its accomplishment gave a new object, a new hope to her existence; for Lady Margaret had preferred enduring even the tortures of remorse, to the listless insipidity of stagnant life, where the passions of her heart, were without excitement, and those talents of which she felt the power, useless and obscured. What indeed would she not have preferred to the society of Mrs. Seymour and her daughters? The Duchess of Altamonte had possessed a mind, as cultivated as her own, and a certain refinement of manner which is sometimes acquired by long intercourse with the most polished societies, but is more frequently the gift of nature, and, if it be not the constant attendant upon nobility of blood, is very rarely found in those who are not distinguished by that adventitious and accidental circumstance. Mrs. Seymour had many of the excellent qualities, but none of the rare endowments possessed by the Duchess; she was a strict follower of the paths of custom and authority; in the steps which had been marked by others, she studiously walked, nor thought it allowable to turn aside for any object however praiseworthy and desirable. She might be said to delight in prejudice—to enjoy herself in the obscure and narrow prison to which she had voluntarily confined her intellects—to look upon the impenetrable walls around her as bulwarks against the hostile attacks by which so many had been overcome. The daughters were strictly trained in the opinions of their mother. “The season of youth,” she would say, “is the season of instruction;” —and consequently every hour had its allotted task; and every action was directed according to some established regulation.