“Do tell me when Lord Avondale returns. They say there has been a real rising in the north: but Trelawney thinks people make a great deal of nothing at all: he says, for his part, he believes it is all talk and nonsense. We are going to London, where I hope you will meet us. Good bye to you, dear coz. Write merrily, and as you used. My motto, you know, is, laugh whilst you can, and be grave when you must. I have written a long letter to my mother and Sophia; but do not ask to see it. Indeed, I would tell you all, if I were not afraid you’d be so foolish as to vex yourself about what cannot be helped.” Lady Avondale did vex herself; and this letter from Frances made her mad. The punishment of crime was then at hand:—Glenarvon had betrayed, had abandoned her. Yet was it possible, or was it not the malice of Frances who wished to vex her? Calantha could not believe him false. He had not been to her as a common lover:—he was true: she felt assured he was; yet her agitation was very great. Perhaps he had been misled, and he feared to tell her. Could she be offended, because he had been weak? Oh, no! he knew she could not: he would never betray her secrets; he would never abandon her, because a newer favourite employed his momentary thoughts. She felt secure he would not, and she was calm. Lady Avondale walked to Belfont. She called upon many of her former friends; but they received her coldly. She returned to the castle; but every eye that met her’s appeared to view her with new marks of disapprobation. Guilt, when bereft of support, is ever reprobated; but see it decked in splendour and success, and where are they who shrink from its approach? Calantha’s name was the theme of just censure, but in Glenarvon’s presence, who had discovered that she was thus worthless and degraded? And did they think she did not feel their meanness. The proud heart is the first to sink before contempt—it feels the wound more keenly than any other can. O, there is nothing in language that can express the deep humiliation of being received with coldness, when kindness is expected—of seeing the look, but half concealed, of strong disapprobation from such as we have cause to feel beneath us, not alone in vigour of mind and spirit, but even in virtue and truth. The weak, the base, the hypocrite, are the first to turn with indignation from their fellow mortals in disgrace; and, whilst the really chaste and pure suspect with caution, and censure with mildness, these traffickers in petty sins, who plume themselves upon their immaculate conduct, sound the alarum bell at the approach of guilt, and clamour their anathemas upon their unwary and cowering prey.