But the dispositions which mingled with my sorrow foreboded its transient duration. My faults stood before me as frightful apparitions,--objects of terror, not of examination; and I hastened to shut them from my offended sight. I quickly turned from reproaching my own persevering rejection of Miss Mortimer's counsels, to blame her method of counselling. Why would she always take such a timid, circuitous way of advising me? If she had told me directly that she suspected Lord Frederick of wishing to entrap me at that odious masquerade, I was sure that I should have consented to stay at home; and I repeated to myself again and again, that I was sure I should,--as we sometimes do in our soliloquies, when we are not quite so sure as we wish to be.
Glad to turn my thoughts from a channel in which nothing pleasurable was to be found, I now reverted to the incidents of the former evening. But there, too, all was comfortless or obscure. The situation in which I had been surprised by Lady Maria was gall and wormwood to my recollection. I could neither endure nor forbear to anticipate the form which the ingenuity of hatred might give to the story of my indiscretion; and, while I pictured myself already the object of sly sarcasm,--of direct reproach,--of insulting pity,--every vein throbbed feverishly with proud impatience of disgrace, and redoubled hatred of my enemy. In the tumult of my thoughts, a wish crossed my mind, that I had once sheltered myself from calumny, and inflicted vengeance on my foe, by consenting to accompany Lord Frederick to Scotland; but this was only the thought of a moment; and the next I relieved my mind from the crowd of tormenting images which pressed upon it, by considering whether my lover had really meditated a bold experiment upon my pliability, or whether my masquerade friend had been mistaken in his intelligence. Finding myself unable to solve this question, I went to seek the assistance of Miss Arnold. I was told she was abroad; and, after wondering a little whither she could have gone without acquainting me, I ordered the carriage, and went to escape from my doubts, and from myself, by a consultation with Lady St Edmunds.
Her Ladyship's servant seemed at first little inclined to admit me; but observing that a hackney coach moved from the door to let my barouche draw up, I concluded that my friend was at home, and resolutely made my way into the house. The servant, seeing me determined, ushered me into a back drawing-room; where, after waiting some time, I was joined by Lady St Edmunds. She never received me with more seeming kindness. She regretted having been detained from me so long; wondered at the stupidity of her domestics in denying her at any time to me; and thanked me most cordially for having made good my entrance. In the course of our conversation, I related, so far as it was known to me, the whole story of the mask; and ended by asking her opinion of the affair. She listened to my tale with every appearance of curiosity and interest; and, when I paused for a reply, declared, without hesitation, that she considered the whole interference and behaviour of my strange protector as a jest. I opposed this opinion, and Lady St Edmunds defended it; till I inadvertently confessed that I had private reasons for believing him to be perfectly serious. Her Ladyship's countenance now expressed a lively curiosity, but I was too much ashamed of my 'private reasons' to acknowledge them; and she was either too polite to urge me, or confident of gaining the desired information by less direct means.