Cards, billiards and music, were the usual nightly occupations. Sir Everard St. Clare and the Count Gondimar sometimes entered into the most tedious and vehement political disputes, unless when Calantha could influence the latter enough to make him sing, which he did in an agreeable, though not in an unaffected manner. At these times, Mrs. Seymour, with Sophia and Frances, unheeding either the noise or the gaiety, eternally embroidered fancy muslins, or, with persevering industry, painted upon velvet. Calantha mocked at these innocent recreations. “Unlike music, drawing and reading, which fill the mind,” she said;—“unlike even to dancing which, though accounted an absurd mode of passing away time, is active and appears natural to the human form and constitution.” “Tell me Avondale,” Calantha would say, “can any thing be more tedious than that incessant irritation of the fingers—that plebian, thrifty and useless mode of increasing in women a love of dress—a selfish desire of adorning their own persons?—I ever loathed it.—There is a sort of self-satisfaction about these ingenious working ladies, which is perfectly disgusting. It gratifies all the little errors of a narrow mind, under the appearance of a notable and domestic turn. At times, when every feeling of the heart should have been called forth, I have seen Sophia examining the patterns of a new gown, and curiously noting every fold of a strangers dress. Because a woman who, like a mechanic, has turned her understanding, and hopes, and energies, into this course, remains uninjured by the storms around her, is she to be admired?—must she be exalted?” “It is not their occupation, but their character, you censure:—I fear, Calantha, it is their very virtue you despise.” “Oh no!” she replied, indignantly: “when real virtue, struggling with temptations of which these senseless, passionless creatures have no conception, clinging for support to Heaven, yet preserves itself uncorrupted amidst the vicious and the base, it deserves a crown of glory, and the praise and admiration of every heart. Not so these spiritless immaculate prejudiced sticklers for propriety. I do not love Sophia:—no, though she ever affords me a cold extenuation for my faults—though through life she considers me as a sort of friend whom fate has imposed upon her through the ties of consanguinity. I did not—could not—cannot love her; but there are some, far better than herself, noble ardent characters, unsullied by a taint of evil; and I think, Avondale, without flattery, you are in the list, that I would die to save; that I would bear every torture and ignominy, to support and render happy.”—“Try then my Calantha,” said Lord Avondale, “to render them so; for, believe me, there is no agony so great as to remember that we have caused one moment’s pang to such as have been kind and good to us.” “You are right,” said Calantha, looking upon him with affection.