Page:Nightmare Abbey (1818).djvu/42

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NIGHTMARE ABBEY.
31

sprightly, but always on subjects light in their nature and limited in their interest: for moral sympathies, in any general sense, had no place in her mind. She had some coquetry, and more caprice, liking and disliking almost in the same moment; pursuing an object with earnestness, while it seemed unattainable, and rejecting it when in her power, as not worth the trouble of possession.

Whether she was touched with a penchant for her cousin Scythrop, or was merely curious to see what effect the tender passion would have on so outré a person; she had not been three days in the Abbey, before she threw out all the lures of her beauty and accomplishments to make a prize of his heart. Scythrop proved an easy conquest. The image of Miss Emily Girouette was already sufficiently dimmed by