Her ladyship, fluent in anger beyond conception, poured, as she turned from her brother to me, and from me to her brother, a flood of nonsense, which, when it had once broken bounds, there was no restraining in its course. Amazed at the torrent, my mother stood aghast; Mowbray burst into unextinguishable laughter: I preserved my gravity as long as I possibly could; I felt the risible infection seizing me, and that malicious Mowbray, just when he saw me in the struggle--the agony--sent me back such an image of my own length of face, that there was no withstanding it. I, too, breaking all bounds of decorum, gave way to visible and audible laughter; and from which I was first recovered by seeing the lady burst into tears, and by hearing, at the same moment, my mother pronounce in a tone of grave displeasure, “Very ill-bred, Harrington!” My mother’s tone of displeasure affecting me much more than the young lady’s tears, I hastened to beg pardon, and I humbled myself before Lady Anne; but she spurned me, and Mowbray laughed the more. Mowbray, I believe, really wished that I should like his sister; yet he could not refrain from indulging his taste for ridicule, even at her expense. My mother wondered how Lord Mowbray could tease his sister in such a manner; and as for Harrington, she really thought he had known that the first law of good-breeding is never to say or do any thing that can hurt another person’s feelings. “Never _intentionally_ to hurt another’s feelings, ma’am,” said I; “I hope you will allow me to plead the innocence of my intentions.” “Oh, yes! there was no malicious _intent_: Not guilty--Not guilty!” cried Mowbray. “Anne, you acquit him there, don’t you, Anne?” Anne sobbed, but spoke not. “It is little consolation, and no compensation, to the person who is hurt,” said my mother, “that the offender pleads he did not mean to say or do any thing rude: a rude thing is a rude thing--the intention is nothing--all we are to judge of is the fact.” “Well, but after all, in fact,” said Mowbray, “there was nothing to make any body seriously angry.” “Of that every body’s own feelings must be the best judge,” said my mother, “the best and the sole judge.” “Thank Heaven! that is not the law of libel _yet_, not the law of the land _yet_,” said Mowbray; “no knowing what we may come to. Would it not be hard, ma’am, to constitute the feelings of one person _always_ sole judge of the intentions of another? though in cases like the present I submit. Let it be a ruled case, that the sensibility of a lady shall be the measure of a gentleman’s guilt.”