Reuben followed the law, and
rose more slowly, yet surely. Euphemia Butler, whose fortune, augmented
by her aunt's generosity, and added to her own beauty, rendered her no
small prize, married a Highland laird, who never asked the name of her
grand-father, and was loaded on the occasion with presents from Lady
Staunton, which made her the envy of all the beauties in Dumbarton and
Argyle shires.
After blazing nearly ten years in the fashionable world, and hiding, like
many of her compeers, an aching heart with a gay demeanour--after
declining repeated offers of the most respectable kind for a second
matrimonial engagement, Lady Staunton betrayed the inward wound by
retiring to the Continent, and taking up her abode in the convent where
she had received her education. She never took the veil, but lived and
died in severe seclusion, and in the practice of the Roman Catholic
religion, in all its formal observances, vigils, and austerities.
Jeanie had so much of her father's spirit as to sorrow bitterly for this
apostasy, and Butler joined in her regret. "Yet any religion, however
imperfect," he said, "was better than cold scepticism, or the hurrying
din of dissipation, which fills the ears of worldlings, until they care
for none of these things.
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