for a young woman upon her entrance into life; and Miss
Nicky hoping that if Mary did go, she would take care not to bring back
any extravagant English notions with her. The younger set debated
amongst themselves how many of them would be invited to accompany Mary
to England, and from thence fell to disputing the possession of a brown
hair trunk, with a flourished D in brass letters on the top.

Mrs. Douglas, with repressed feelings, set about offering the sacrifice
she had planned, and in a letter to Lady Juliana, descriptive of her
daughter's situation, she sought to excite her tenderness without
creating an alarm. How far she succeeded will be seen hereafter. In the
meantime we must take a retrospective glance at the last seventeen years
of her Ladyship's life.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

_Her_ "only labour was to kill the time;
And labour dire it is, and weary woe."

_Castle of Indolence._

YEARS had rolled on amidst heartless pleasures and joyless amusements,
but Lady Juliana was made neither the wiser nor the better by added
years and increased experience. Time had in vain turned his glass
before eyes still dazzled with the gaudy allurements of the world, for
she took "no note of time" but as the thing that was to take her to the
Opera and the Park, and that sometimes hurried her excessively, and
sometimes bored her to death. At length she was compelled to abandon her
chase after happiness in the only sphere where she believed it was to be
found. Lord Courtland's declining health unfitted him for the
dissipation of a London life; and, by the advice of his physician, he
resolved upon retiring to a country seat which he possessed in the
vicinity of Bath. Lady Juliana was in despair at the thoughts of this
sudden wrench from what she termed "life;" but she had no resource; for
though her good-natured husband gave her the whole of General Cameron's
allowance, that scarcely served to keep her in clothes; and though her
brother was perfectly willing that she and her children should occupy
apartments in his house, yet he would have been equally acquiescent had
she proposed to remove from it. Lady Juliana had a sort of instinctive
knowledge of this, which prevented her from breaking out into open
remonstrance. She therefore contented herself with being more than
usually peevish and irascible to her servants and children, and talking
to her friends of the prodigious sacrifice she was about to make for her