Had Lord Glenmore paused to reflect, and had recourse to that unerring light, which never dazzles to betray--his steps would have been guided by unfailing wisdom, and he would have found his chief happiness in his chief duty; whereas he pursued the phantom ambition; he did not consider that the necessary consequence which must follow an official occupation, was his leaving his young wife without a natural protector, amid scenes that were any thing but safe; and he was desirous that she, too, should play her part, and by those graces and influences which have such sway over the destinies of men and of empires, take an interest and acquire a power in that vaulting game of ambition in which he himself delighted to engage. He considered not how often he must leave her through the day, and the greater part of the night, to run this hazardous career, at an age when caution sleeps and passions are awake, and in the midst of a set which, though certainly not wholly devoid of some unblemished characters, was yet, generally speaking, in its whole tendency perilous to the pure and domestic virtues--a woman's only true glory. Yet on this precipice was Lady Glenmore placed, without one real friend to whom she could look for genuine advice or succour. Her mother's (Lady Melcomb) absence from town prevented that natural tie, and had she been there it would have proved the business of the exclusives to have prevented that free and happy intercourse, both on the principle of not allowing any aged person to mar the brilliancy of their set, as well as that of excluding all those who might see through the drift of the society. On Lady Melcomb's part it was too early in the day to have any suspicion of the work of mischief which was carrying on to separate her from her daughter, and thus was Lady Glenmore like a lovely lamb amidst ravening wolves.