Chapter 15

Lady Chatterton, finding that little was to be expected in her present
situation, excepting what she looked forward to from the varying
admiration of John Moseley to her youngest daughter, determined to accept
an invitation of Borne standing to a nobleman's seat about fifty miles
from the hall, and, in order to keep things in their proper places, to
leave Grace with her friends, who had expressed a wish to that effect.
Accordingly, the day succeeding the departure of her son, she proceeded on
her expedition, accompanied by her willing assistant in the matrimonial
speculations.

Grace Chatterton was by nature retiring and delicate; but her feelings
were acute, and on the subject of female propriety sensitive to a degree,
that the great want of it in a relation she loved as much as her mother
had possibly in some measure increased. Her affections were too single in
their objects to have left her long in doubt as to their nature with
respect to the baronet's son; and it was one of the most painful orders
she had ever received, that which compelled her to accept her cousin's
invitation. Her mother was peremptory, however, and Grace was obliged to
comply. Every delicate feeling she possessed revolted at the step: the
visit itself was unwished for on her part; but there did exist a reason
which had reconciled her to that--the wedding of Clara. But now to remain,
after all her family had gone, in the house where resided the man who had
as yet never solicited those affections she had been unable to withhold,
it was humiliating--it was degrading her in her own esteem, and she could
scarcely endure it.

It is said that women are fertile in inventions to further their schemes
of personal gratification, vanity, or even mischief. It may be it is true;
but the writer of these pages is a man--one who has seen much of the other
sex, and he is happy to have an opportunity of paying a tribute to female
purity and female truth. That there are hearts so disinterested as to lose
the considerations of self, in advancing the happiness of those they love;
that there are minds so pure as to recoil with disgust from the admission
of deception, indelicacy, or management, he knows; for he has seen it from
long and close examination. He regrets that the very artlessness of those
who are most pure in the one sex, subjects them to the suspicions of the
grosser-materials which compose the other He believes that innocency,
singleness of heart, ardency of feeling, and unalloyed, shrinking
delicacy, sometimes exist in the female bosom, to an extent that but few
men are happy enough to discover, and that most men believe incompatible
with the frailties of human nature. Grace Chatterton possessed no little
of what may almost be called this