Chapter 30 - Page 2

personal advantages and
agreeable manners had first attracted her; and believing him to be Mrs.
Bradfort's heir, she had gladly married him. I think she lived a
disappointed woman, after her father's death; and I was not sorry when she
let us know that she was about to "change her condition," as it is termed
in widow's parlance, by marrying an elderly man, who possessed the means
of giving her all that money can bestow. With this second, or, according
to Venus's nomenclature, _step_-husband, she went to Europe, and there
remained, dying only three years ago, an amply endowed widow. We kept up a
civil sort of intercourse with her to the last, actually passing a few
weeks with her, some fifteen years since, in a house, half-barn,
half-castle, that she called a palace, on one of the unrivalled lakes of
Italy. As _la Signora Montiera,_ (Montier) she was sufficiently respected,
finishing her career as a dowager of good reputation, and who loved the
"pomps and vanities of this wicked world." I endeavoured, in this last
meeting, to bring to her mind divers incidents of her early life, but with
a singular want of success. They had actually passed, so far as her memory
was concerned, into the great gulf of time, keeping company with her sins,
and appeared to be entirely forgot. Nevertheless, la Signora was disposed
to treat me and view me with consideration, as soon as she found me living
in credit, with money, horses, and carriages at command, and to forget
that I had been only a skip-master. She listened smilingly, and with
patience, to what, I dare say, were my prolix narratives, though her own
recollections were so singularly impaired. She did remember something
about the wheelbarrow and the canal in Hyde Park; but as for the voyage
across the Pacific, most of the incidents had passed out of her mind. To
do her honour, Lucy wore the pearls, on an occasion in which she gave a
little _festa_ to her neighbours; and I ascertained she did remember them.
She even hinted to one of her guests, in my hearing, that they had been
intended for _her_ originally; but "we cannot command the impulses of the
heart, you know, _câra mia_," she added, with a very self-complacent sort
of a sigh.

What of all this? The _ci-devant_ Emily was no more than a summary of the
feelings, interests, and passions of millions, living and dying in a
narrow circle erected by her own vanities, and embellished by her own
contracted notions of what is the end and aim of human existence, and
within a sphere that _she_ fancied respectable and refined.

As for the race of the Clawbonnys, all the elderly members of this
extensive family lived and died in my service; or, it might be better to
say, I lived in theirs. Venus