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MISS MONTRESSOR TO LA MARQUISE DE VILLEROI.

La victoire est à moi, ma chère et belle amie! Yes; this cold, this prudish Lady Annandale loves Lord Nottingham; and with a passion such as only tranquil, concentrated women feel.

I see it in a thousand instances: in the bright sparkle of her eyes when he is announced; in the drooping lid that veils them when he approaches; in her heightened colour and embarrassed manner; and, above all, in the increasing reserve and shrinking modesty of her demeanour towards him.

I catch her looking at the pendule when the time of his daily visit approaches: nay, I have positively marked the quickened pulsation of her heart, visible even through the folds of her robe, when his step has been heard; which she can distinguish from any other, as I lately had a proof-and this is one of the many certain symptoms in the malady ycleped love.

We were sitting in her boudoir at the time he generally comes, when I heard feet approaching, and said, "here comes le marquis."

"No," answered Lady Annandale, "the step is not his ;" and her cheek became perfectly crimson when she found my eyes fixed with an expression of surprise on her face. She was right: the step was that of Lord Charles Fitzhardinge, who brought me a note from the

comtesse.

Lord Nottingham is un peu bête, for he appears totally unconscious of the conquest he has achieved; or else he is determined not to avail himself of it. His manner grows every day more profoundly respectful towards her,

though it always partook of the Sir Charles Grandison style; and he now approaches her as if she were a queen, and he, the humblest of her liege subjects.

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This surely cannot be artifice to dupe me. nandale et madame la comtesse like each other less every day. Her indifference has wounded his vanity, the strongest and most vulnerable of all his feelings; and her reserve and austere coldness to the ladies of the clique he is most ambitious to propitiate, has irritated him into opposing her will, by inviting them, bon gré, malgré, to his house..

Notre frau gräfinn, who is si aimable et bon enfant, when she has every thing her own way, can, as you know, be not un peu méchante when opposed. She has never forgiven Augusta for being so beautiful-a crime of deep die, and rarely pardoned by women-and, to avenge it, she has insisted on exhibiting Lord Annandale as son amant en titre, which she thinks an éclatant proof of her superiority of attraction over the young beauty, his wife, and an infallible mean of mortifying her.

Notre frau grafinn is, however, mistaken in this last calculation; for Augusta is so perfectly indifferent towards her lord, that she has never, I do believe, remarked his attentions to her rival. The truth is, her own heart is too deeply occupied to permit her observing the movements of others; and she has too little vanity to be wounded by the proceedings which would be most influential with the majority of women.

Notre comtesse is evidently piqued at Augusta's freedom from jealousy: she had expected to reap an éclatant triumph from the tears and anger of Lady Annandale; but, these being wanting, she considers her victory incomplete.

She is everlastingly directing Lord Annandale's attention to what she calls les gaucheries et sottises de son épouse, which are her terms for designating the reserved demeanour and constrained politeness of Augusta; whose

avoidance of her, the comtesse resents as an unmerited injury, which she endeavours to excite him to punish.

With this charitable object, she is perpetually asserting qu'il n'est pas maître chez lui; a charge so peculiarly offensive to a weak man, that, to refute it, there is no folly he is not ready to commit. The proof of the truth of her charge, she says, exists in the fact, that he no longer dare have his house open, as formerly, for those delicious petits soupers that once rendered his home the envy of all the élite of fashion.

She wounds his amour propre, by continually pointing out the marked indifference of his wife for him; and then she endeavours to apply a salve to the wounds she inflicts, by artfully adding,

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Imaginez vous, mon cher, une petite sotte comme elle, d'avoir l'air de ne se soucier pas d'un bel homme comme vous bien élevé, distingué, et spirituel; vraiment, il y a de quoi faire perdre patience."

Still the wounds rankle, and he likes the comtesse less every day, for being the instrument to inflict them.

He turns to me for consolation; and I have so thoroughly penetrated into the very inmost folds of his -character, that I know how to administer it more efficaciously than any other woman could; who not having the same motives and opportunities for discovering and analysing his weaknesses, could not mould them to her will as I do.

My flattery is administered in small, but judicious doses; much on the principle of the homœopathic system, which first irritates the symptoms of the malady, in order to enable the practitioner to ascertain its nature, and then soothes it. My doses are too small to give distaste; not that I ever found any patients complain of their excess, provided they are amply sugared; but their paucity renders them more valued, and the taker more anxious for a repetition of them.

I extol him more by innuendoes than by fulsome, une

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quivocal admiration. I decry the look of all men whose style does not, in some degree, resemble his own; and those who most approach this, my implied standard of perfection and manly beauty, I remark, would be indeed handsome, if they possessed such and such features,— hair, eyes, or teeth,-always particularising those peculiar to him.

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A good opportunity was offered me a few days ago of administering to his inordinate vanity. The Comte Walkarinsky, brother to the Comtesse Hohenlinden, has arrived here; and is pronounced, by the ladies of our clique, to be the handsomest man ever seen. He certainly is extremely good-looking, and possesses l'air noble et distingué, so rare and attractive. When several of the women were commenting on him, I, while assenting to his claim to manly beauty, observed, that his, however, was not precisely the style that I preferred. Then I proceeded to give a minute description en beau of Lord Annandale of course, without naming him—as my idéal of perfection, which I saw with a glance he immediately appropriated. You should have beheld him at that moment, to be aware of the extent of self-complacency to which the gratified vanity of a weak man may conduct him and the overflowing gratitude to which a judicious flattery gives birth.

You know how remarkably handsome the Comte Hohenlinden is well, ma chère, his brother-in-law is infinitely superior: judge, then, how delighted Lord Annandale must have been with my implied compliment. Notre amie la comtesse, with her flaxen locks and light-blue eyes, never could be taken for a Polonaise; while monsieur son frère with dark sparkling orbs and raven curls, could never be mistaken for any other than a Pole.

Last evening we were surprised by a note, announcing the arrival of Lord and Lady Vernon. Lady Annandale instantly commanded the carriage, in order that she might go and see them; but her lord hoped, in a tone that

looked more like dictation than entreaty, that she would not leave home, for that he expected some people to look in.

"I am sorry to be compelled to refuse your request," replied Lady Annandale, coldly; "but I cannot permit my father and mother to pass their first evening in London, without seeing them."

"What possible difference can a few hours make?" urged le mari, with a most marital air; "and will not an early visit to-morrow, answer every purpose?"

"It would neither satisfy my impatient affection, nor my sense of duty," said l'épouse.

Milor bit his lip and miladi rang for her shawl.

"You would much oblige me by not going out this evening," said Lord Annandale, pertinaciously returning to the subject; "for it will look so strange to have you from home when ladies come here.".

"I should certainly comply with your wishes," replied Augusta, "if my own feelings only were to be sacrificed; but, as my father and mother rely upon seeing me, I cannot disappoint them."

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"Then I am to consider that wishes are, in your estimation, utterly valueless?" rejoined milor, growing

angry.

"I am sorry you should entertain this opinion," said Lady Annandale, as, rising from her chair, the carriage being at that moment announced, she left the room; deputing me à faire les honneurs pour elle to the expected

visiters.

Her husband, for the first time, was guilty of the rudeness, purement Anglais, of not handing her to her carriage, and allowed her to depart without even a kind message to le papa et la maman; an omission that, I am sure, wounded her much more than the want of politeness to herself.

Before she had time to reach the hall, the carriage of la comtesse arrived and when sa seigneurie entered the

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