The arrival of this family was a happy relief from the oppression which
hung on the spirits of the Moseleys, and their reception marked with the
mild benevolence which belonged to the nature of the baronet, and that
impressement which so eminently distinguished the manners of his wife.
The honorable Misses Chatterton were both handsome; but the younger was,
if possible, a softened picture of her brother. There was the same
retiring bashfulness and the same sweetness of temper as distinguished
the baron, and Grace was the peculiar favorite of Emily Moseley. Nothing
of the strained or sentimental nature which so often characterize what
is called female friendships, however, had crept into the communications
between these young women. Emily loved her sisters too well to go out of
her own family for a repository of her griefs or a partaker in her joys.
Had her life been chequered with such passions, her own sisters were too
near her own age to suffer her to think of a confidence in which the
holy ties of natural affection did not give a claim to a participation.
Mrs. Wilson had found it necessary to give her charge very different
views on many subjects from those which Jane and Clara had been suffered
to imbibe of themselves; but in no degree had she impaired the
obligations of filial piety or family concord. Emily was, if anything,
more respectful to her parents, more affectionate to her friends, than
any of her connexions; for in her the warmth of natural feeling was
heightened by an unvarying sense of duty.
In Grace Chatterton she found, in many respects, a temper and taste
resembling her own. She therefore loved her better than others who had
equally general claims on her partiality, and as such a friend she now
received her with cordial and sincere affection.
Jane, who had not felt satisfied with the ordering of Providence for the
disposal of her sympathies, and had long felt a restlessness that
prompted her to look abroad for a confiding spirit to whom to
communicate her--secrets she had none that delicacy would suffer her to
reveal--but to communicate her crude opinions and reflections, she had
early selected Catherine for this person. Catherine, however, had not
stood the test of trial. For a short time the love of heraldry kept them
together; but Jane, finding her companion's gusto limited to the charms
of the coronet and supporters chiefly, abandoned the attempt in despair,
and was actually on the look-out for a new candidate for the vacant
station as Colonel Egerton came into the neighborhood. A really delicate
female mind shrinks from the exposure of its love to the other sex, and
Jane began to be less anxious to form a connexion which would either
violate the sensibility of her nature, or lead to treachery to her
friend.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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