that surrounded her there was no individual she could love, she experienced a chasm in her heart, which left it more open to the reception of those petrifying principles, that Lady Eltondale so sedulously inculcated. At this moment, in Selina's history, she stood on that narrow line, which separates vice and virtue. Her avidity of praise, by teaching her how best to improve and exercise her talents, had as yet but increased her charms; and her distrust of others first taught her to exercise her own judgment. Circumstances were still to decide, whether her strengthening reason would serve to control the affections of her heart, or whether the school of stoicism, in which she was now entered, would entirely eradicate its better feelings: whether her natural volatility was to be corrected by reflection, or matured into coquetry by artifice: in short, whether the dormant seeds of a rational education would finally spring up in the very hotbed of fashion, which called forth the premature weeds of folly and extravagance; or whether the intoxicating incense of flattery, aided both by the precept and example of the designing Viscountess, would destroy them in the bud, and offer up one more heartless victim as a sacrifice to that world, which but repays with present scorn and future repentance the devotion of its wretched votaries. CHAPTER X. There is a joy in grief, when peace dwells in the breast of the sad, but sorrow wastes the mournful, and their days are few! They fall away like the flower on which the Sun looks in his strength, after the mildew has passed over it, and its head is heavy with the drops of night. CROMA. Whilst Selina thus brilliantly moved in the gayest scenes of fashionable splendor, Adelaide Wildenheim, unknown, unnoticed, was endeavouring, in the calm retirement of the country, to acquire fortitude to support a weight of misfortune, by which a less firm mind would have been crushed, and which, from time and space, seemed but to gain increased momentum.