Soon after the ladies had retired to the drawing-room, they separated, some adjourning to the music-room, some to the green-house, and Miss Seymour gladly accepted Adelaide's invitation to proceed from it to the garden. Selina had, before dinner was half over, thought Miss Wildenheim "the most delightful girl in the world!" But she was too diffident of her own claims to attention to have sought her acquaintance so immediately; though, with her usual precipitation, she felt already convinced she should love her all her life, if she were never to see her again. "She is too elegant, too clever, to like an unpolished girl like me," thought Selina. But in this she was mistaken; for Adelaide bestowed as much admiration on her untutored charms, as her own more polished graces excited in Miss Seymour's mind, though she manifested her approbation in a more sober manner; for, besides being three years older than Selina, she had, unfortunately, had more opportunity of having youth's first happy feelings chilled by the bitter blasts of capricious fortune. When Selina found, from Adelaide's expressive manner, that she might say to herself, "She really does like me," her surprise and delight knew no bounds; and, if she had before thought the object of her enthusiasm the most charming of the daughters of Eve, she was now nothing less than an angel. Her pleasure did not escape her new friend's notice; for Selina was too ingenuous to conceal any thing. Adelaide's countenance was illuminated with one of those joyful smiles, which had brightened it in better days, as she mentally exclaimed, "Happy creature!" But she sighed with real sorrow, as she instantaneously recollected the fleeting nature of youthful impressions, "_when thought is speech, and speech is truth_."