He seated himself by her side, and gave her very little opportunity of enjoying the drollery of the afterpiece. But he did not, he could not, flirt with her. There was a complete simplicity—a straightforward frankness in her manner, which rendered it impossible to know how to begin. Moreover, she believed herself in love with her husband; and besides, being dutifully and religiously devoted, she was particularly anxious to give him satisfaction after her errors of the morning; and her real thoughts and attention were on him and for him alone. He could not but be pleased; knowing women to their heart’s core, as he did, he saw the genuine innocence of her manner, and he felt assured that it must take a long apprenticeship to the world to contaminate the purity of her mind. He resolved to watch attentively over it. The kindness of his manner towards her the next day gratified her. He presented her with a magnificent real Cashmere; and the next day with a beautiful guard-ring. She thought him very kind, and she determined to do every thing to please him, which was, in fact, never to do any thing except to dress well, sit on the sofa buried among cushions (not bolt upright engaged in any employment), and especially to fling herself back into the corner of her carriage with an elegant _abandon_ when she went out airing. Her efforts to do nothing were crowned with success: he thought her extremely improved; but this _dolce far niente_ to her was not _dolce_, especially when they returned into the country, and she could not go shopping every day—an occupation to which he had no objection, as her pin-money was so ample that she could not easily be distressed. He now thought he might venture to gather some of his own friends and relations around him, and before Christmas there arrived a large party, all people of the very highest fashion, pleasing and agreeable. They, like their host, seemed in their conversation to have adopted the motto of “_Glissez mortels, mais n’appuyez pas_;” and though the hours might fly swiftly and pleasantly in their society, there was nothing about them sufficiently original or individual to deserve recording. Lucy behaved exceedingly well; she had been properly drilled before their arrival: she was in an interesting state, which, assisted by the lectures of the apothecary, and the constant solicitude of Lord Montreville, and the ennui occasioned by being headed, as a sportsman would term it, whenever she attempted to stir hand or foot, gave to her whole carriage and deportment a most excellent languor. She no longer felt any flutter when she made the signal after dinner, and, upon the whole, Lord Montreville thought the result all he could wish, except that he would fain have had her join a little more in general conversation, if he could have been quite sure of no exuberance of spirits.