_Mrs. Vernon to Mr. De Courcy._
Churchhill.
Well, my dear Reginald, I have seen this dangerous creature, and must
give you some description of her, though I hope you will soon be able
to form your own judgment. She is really excessively pretty; however
you may choose to question the allurements of a lady no longer young, I
must, for my own part, declare that I have seldom seen so lovely a
woman as Lady Susan. She is delicately fair, with fine grey eyes and
dark eyelashes; and from her appearance one would not suppose her more
than five and twenty, though she must in fact be ten years older. I was
certainly not disposed to admire her, though always hearing she was
beautiful; but I cannot help feeling that she possesses an uncommon
union of symmetry, brilliancy, and grace. Her address to me was so
gentle, frank, and even affectionate, that, if I had not known how much
she has always disliked me for marrying Mr. Vernon, and that we had
never met before, I should have imagined her an attached friend. One is
apt, I believe, to connect assurance of manner with coquetry, and to
expect that an impudent address will naturally attend an impudent mind;
at least I was myself prepared for an improper degree of confidence in
Lady Susan; but her countenance is absolutely sweet, and her voice and
manner winningly mild. I am sorry it is so, for what is this but
deceit? Unfortunately, one knows her too well. She is clever and
agreeable, has all that knowledge of the world which makes conversation
easy, and talks very well, with a happy command of language, which is
too often used, I believe, to make black appear white. She has already
almost persuaded me of her being warmly attached to her daughter,
though I have been so long convinced to the contrary. She speaks of her
with so much tenderness and anxiety, lamenting so bitterly the neglect
of her education, which she represents however as wholly unavoidable,
that I am forced to recollect how many successive springs her ladyship
spent in town, while her daughter was left in Staffordshire to the care
of servants, or a governess very little better, to prevent my believing
what she says.
If her manners have so great an influence on my resentful heart, you
may judge how much more strongly they operate on Mr. Vernon’s generous
temper. I wish I could be as well satisfied as he is, that it was
really her choice to leave Langford for Churchhill; and if she had not
stayed there for months before she discovered that her friend’s manner
of living did not suit her situation or feelings, I might have believed
that concern for the loss of such a husband as Mr. Vernon, to whom her
own behaviour was far from unexceptionable, might for a time make her
wish for retirement. But I cannot forget the length of her visit to the
Mainwarings, and when I reflect on the different mode of life which she
led with them from that to which she must now submit, I can only
suppose that the wish of establishing her reputation by following
though late the path of propriety, occasioned her removal from a family
where she must in reality have been particularly happy. Your friend Mr.
Smith’s story, however, cannot be quite correct, as she corresponds
regularly with Mrs. Mainwaring. At any rate it must be exaggerated. It
is scarcely possible that two men should be so grossly deceived by her
at once.
Yours, &c.,
CATHERINE VERNON