ABSTRACT
On quitting Castle Delaval, Lord Glenarvon went as he had promised, to Mr. Monmouth’s seata in Wales, by name, Mortanville Priory. There, in a large and brilliant society, he soon forgot Calantha. Lady Augusta rallied him for his caprice; Lady Mandeville sought to obtain his confidence: tearsb and reproaches are ever irksome; and the confidence that had once been placed in a former mistress, now suddenly withdrawn, was wholly given to her. A petitioner is at all times intrusive; and sorrow at a distance but serves to encrease the coldness and inconstancy it upbraids. The contrast is great between smiling and triumphant beauty, and remorse, miseryc and disgrace. And, if / every reason here enumerated were insufficient,d to account for a lover’s inconstancy, it is enough in one word to say, that Lady Avondale was absent; for Lord Glenarvon was of a disposition to attend so wholly to those, in whose presence he took delight, that he failed to remember those to whom he had once been attached; so that like the wheels of a watch, the chainse of his affections might be said to unwind from the absent, in proportion as they twined themselves around the favorite of the moment; and being extreme in all things, he could not sufficiently devote himself to the one, without taking from the other all that he had given.
