The countenance of Lady Annabel instantly brightened; she embraced her
child with extreme fondness, and breathed the softest and the sweetest
expressions of gratitude and love.
CHAPTER XV.
When Lady Monteagle discovered that of which her good-natured friends
took care she should not long remain ignorant, that Venetia Herbert
had been the companion of Lord Cadurcis' childhood, and that the most
intimate relations had once subsisted between the two families,
she became the prey of violent jealousy; and the bitterness of her
feelings was not a little increased, when she felt that she had not
only been abandoned, but duped; and that the new beauty, out of his
fancy for whom she had flattered herself she had so triumphantly
rallied him, was an old friend, whom he always admired. She seized the
first occasion, after this discovery, of relieving her feelings, by
a scene so violent, that Cadurcis had never again entered Monteagle
House; and then repenting of this mortifying result, which she had
herself precipitated, she overwhelmed him with letters, which, next
to scenes, were the very things which Lord Cadurcis most heartily
abhorred. These, now indignant, now passionate, now loading him with
reproaches, now appealing to his love, and now to his pity, daily
arrived at his residence, and were greeted at first only with short
and sarcastic replies, and finally by silence.
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