Anne Bronte: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

16. CHAPTER XVI (continued)

'I hope it may be so,' answered she.

'I know it is so,' persisted I.

'You have not been tried yet, Helen - we can but hope,' said she in her cold, cautious way.

'I was vexed at her incredulity; but I am not sure her doubts were entirely without sagacity; I fear I have found it much easier to remember her advice than to profit by it; - indeed, I have sometimes been led to question the soundness of her doctrines on those subjects. Her counsels may be good, as far as they go - in the main points at least; - but there are some things she has overlooked in her calculations. I wonder if she was ever in love.

I commenced my career - or my first campaign, as my uncle calls it - kindling with bright hopes and fancies - chiefly raised by this conversation - and full of confidence in my own discretion. At first, I was delighted with the novelty and excitement of our London life; but soon I began to weary of its mingled turbulence and constraint, and sigh for the freshness and freedom of home. My new acquaintances, both male and female, disappointed my expectations, and vexed and depressed me by turns; I for I soon grew tired of studying their peculiarities, and laughing at their foibles - particularly as I was obliged to keep my criticisms to myself, for my aunt would not hear them - and they - the ladies especially - appeared so provokingly mindless, and heartless, and artificial. The gentlemen scorned better, but, perhaps, it was because I knew them less - perhaps, because they flattered me; but I did not fall in love with any of them; and, if their attentions pleased me one moment, they provoked me the next, because they put me out of humour with myself, by revealing my vanity and making me fear I was becoming like some of the ladies I so heartily despised.