But to gain an influence over
this child had been the sole object of Lady Annabel's life, and she
had hitherto met that success which usually awaits in this world the
strong purpose of a determined spirit. Lady Annabel herself was far
too acute a person not to have detected early in life the talents of
her child, and she was proud of them. She had cultivated them with
exemplary devotion and with admirable profit. But Lady Annabel had not
less discovered that, in the ardent and susceptible temperament of
Venetia, means were offered by which the heart might be trained not
only to cope with but overpower the intellect. With great powers of
pleasing, beauty, accomplishments, a sweet voice, a soft manner, a
sympathetic heart, Lady Annabel was qualified to charm the world; she
had contrived to fascinate her daughter. She had inspired Venetia with
the most romantic attachment for her: such as rather subsists
between two female friends of the same age and hearts, than between
individuals in the relative situations which they bore to each other.
Yet while Venetia thus loved her mother, she could not but also
respect and revere the superior being whose knowledge was her guide on
all subjects, and whose various accomplishments deprived her secluded
education of all its disadvantages; and when she felt that one so
gifted had devoted her life to the benefit of her child, and that
this beautiful and peerless lady had no other ambition but to be
her guardian and attendant spirit; gratitude, fervent and profound,
mingled with admiring reverence and passionate affection, and together
formed a spell that encircled the mind of Venetia with talismanic
sway.
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