circle of her father's
and mother's acquaintance to afford her the smallest satisfaction: she
saw nobody in whose favour she could wish to overcome her own shyness
and reserve. The men appeared to her all coarse, the women all pert,
everybody underbred; and she gave as little contentment as she received
from introductions either to old or new acquaintance. The young ladies
who approached her at first with some respect, in consideration of her
coming from a baronet's family, were soon offended by what they termed
"airs"; for, as she neither played on the pianoforte nor wore fine
pelisses, they could, on farther observation, admit no right of
superiority.

The first solid consolation which Fanny received for the evils of home,
the first which her judgment could entirely approve, and which gave any
promise of durability, was in a better knowledge of Susan, and a hope of
being of service to her. Susan had always behaved pleasantly to herself,
but the determined character of her general manners had astonished
and alarmed her, and it was at least a fortnight before she began to
understand a disposition so totally different from her own. Susan saw
that much was wrong at home, and wanted to set it right. That a girl of
fourteen, acting only on her own unassisted reason, should err in the
method of reform, was not wonderful; and Fanny soon became more disposed
to admire the natural light of the mind which could so early distinguish
justly, than to censure severely the faults of conduct to which it led.
Susan was only acting on the same truths, and pursuing the same system,
which her own judgment acknowledged, but which her more supine and
yielding temper would have shrunk from asserting. Susan tried to be
useful, where _she_ could only have gone away and cried; and that Susan
was useful she could perceive; that things, bad as they were, would
have been worse but for such interposition, and that both her mother and
Betsey were restrained from some excesses of very offensive indulgence
and vulgarity.

In every argument with her mother, Susan had in point of reason the
advantage, and never was there any maternal tenderness to buy her off.
The blind fondness which was for ever producing evil around her she had
never known. There was no gratitude for affection past or present to
make her better bear with its excesses to the others.

All this became gradually evident, and gradually placed Susan before her
sister as an object of mi