Another cause, too, existed, to render their separation an apparent consequence of her marriage. Lord and Lady Melcombe had not lived at any time on terms of intimacy with that circle which now exclusively formed their daughter's and Lord Glenmore's society; and a further barrier by this means stood between their meeting; but it was one which, if natural feelings had been allowed their proper influence, and had any advance been made to Lord and Lady Melcombe, on the part of those persons, towards their acquaintance, might easily have been removed.
In this case, for their daughter's sake, they would readily have met any advance, and in order to do so, have stepped out of their own habitual line of society; a society founded on the dignified principles of high rank, and the rational grounds of real social happiness: but they were the last persons to court an intimacy where a mutual desire was not expressed for its formation; and the question, however painful as it affected their natural intercourse with their child, was not, however, one which gave rise to any seriously uneasy feelings. When they did see her, they saw her so fondly attached to her husband, and so happy, what could they fear for her? It would almost have seemed like a selfish apprehension, to have indulged any doubts regarding her future welfare.
Their own course through life had been one perpetual gleam of sunshine, a circumstance which is apt to render us more blind to the possibility of evil, than when we have been exercised in the school of adversity; that school by which we are alone perfected, and without whose salutary discipline the false security is indulged, that "_to-morrow will be as to-day, and even more abundant_," and we dread no check to our earthly career.
How fearful is this species of happiness, which, resting on itself, forgets the hand by which it is alone upheld! Could Lord and Lady Melcombe have seen through this delusion--could they have guessed that their child stood at the moral point where the two paths separate which lead to virtue or to vice, and where the traveller in the road of life, according as he makes his choice, will be admitted in the end to misery or happiness--they would have performed their duty as parents unhesitatingly; they would have pointed out to their child the excellence of the one course, and have warned her of the inevitable ruin and degradation attendant on the other. As to the current reports of the day, they were the last to hear them, as is usually the case with those most concerned; and in this respect Lord Glenmore was removed still further from a knowledge of the truth. Lady Glenmore, deprived of her natural and true guides, surrounded by persons whose lives were, generally speaking, characterized by the same errors, on the brink of which she now hung, and who, if they looked on such conduct as error, held it in a very venial light even when detected, and as nothing, if it evaded open discovery, had little chance of receiving any counsel in time to save her.