The idea that her son should
have called every day for a week on a married lady, beautiful and
attractive, would have filled her with alarm amounting almost to horror.
Yet such was the innocent case. It might at the first glance seem
difficult to reconcile the rival charms of the Basilisk and Lady Bertie
and Bellair, and to understand how Tancred could be so interested in the
preparations for a voyage which was to bear him from the individual in
whose society he found a daily gratification. But the truth is, that
Lady Bertie and Bellair was the only person who sympathised with his
adventure.
She listened with the liveliest concern to his account of all his
progress; she even made many admirable suggestions, for Lady Bertie and
Bellair had been a frequent visitor at Cowes, and was quite initiated
in the mysteries of the dilettante service of the Yacht Club. She was
a capital sailor; at least she always told Tancred so. But this was not
the chief source of sympathy, or the principal bond of union, between
them. It was not the voyage, so much as the object of the voyage, that
touched all the passion of Lady Bertie and Bellair. Her heart was at
Jerusalem. The sacred city was the dream of her life; and, amid the
dissipations of May Fair and the distractions of Belgravia, she had in
fact all this time only been thinking of Jehoshaphat and Sion.
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