a very excellent sort of person for duenna, who had a good deal of tact,
and didn't bore me, and was shrewd enough to make things very smooth. I
liked her very much, though I think now she was something of a
hypocrite. But she had enough principle to make things very respectable,
and I never took her for a friend. We had very pretty little dinners,
and little evenings when anybody wanted them, though the house wasn't
very large. My duenna (by name Throckmorton) liked journeys as well as I
did, and never objected to going anywhere. Altogether we were very
comfortable.

The people whom I had known in that first year of my social existence,
had drifted away from me a good deal in this new life. Sophie I could
not help meeting sometimes, for she was still a gay woman, but I
naturally belonged to a younger set, and did not go very long into
general society. We still disliked each other with the cordiality of our
first acquaintance, but I was very sorry for it, and had a great many
repentances about it after every meeting. Kilian I met a good deal, but
we rather avoided each other, at short range, though exceedingly good
friends to the general observation.

Mary Leighton I seldom saw; no doubt she was consumed with envy when she
heard of me, for they were poor, and not able to keep up with gay life
as would have pleased her. She still maintained her intimacy with
Kilian, for he had not the resolution to break off a flirtation of
which, I was sure, he must be very tired.

Henrietta had married very well, two years after I saw her at R----, and
was the staid, placid matron that she was always meant to be.

Charlotte Benson was the clever woman still: a little stronger-minded,
and no less good-looking than of old, and no more. People were beginning
to say that she would not marry, though she was only twenty-six. She did
not go much to parties, and was not in my set. She affected art and
lectures, and excursions to mountains, and campings-out, and
unconventionalities, and no doubt had a good time in her way. But it was
not my way: and so we seldom met. When we did, she did not show much
more respect for me than of old, which always had the effect of making
me feel angry.

And as for Richard, we could not have been much further apart, if he
had lived "in England and I at Rotterdam." For a year, while he was
settling up the estate, he was closely in the city. I did not see him
more than once or twice, all business being transa