She violated etiquette with a wilful grace which made
the outrage a precedent, and she mingled with princes without feeling
her inferiority. Nature, and art, and fortune were the graces which had
combined to form this girl. She was a jewel set in gold, and worn by a
king.
Her creed had made her, in ancient Christendom, feel less an alien; but
when she returned to that native country which she had never forgotten,
she found that creed her degradation. Her indignant spirit clung with
renewed ardour to the crushed altars of her faith; and not before those
proud shrines where cardinals officiate, and a thousand acolytes fling
their censers, had she bowed with half the abandonment of spirit with
which she invoked the Virgin in her oratory at Dacre.
The recent death of her mother rendered Mr. Dacre and herself little
inclined to enter society; and as they were both desirous of residing on
that estate from which they had been so long and so unwillingly absent,
they had not yet visited London. The greater part of their time had been
passed chiefly in communication with those great Catholic families with
whom the Dacres were allied, and to which they belonged.
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