have liked it better if she had not spoken so
frequently to him of her own high position as the daughter of an
earl, or so frequently to others of her low position as the wife of
an attorney. But, on the whole, they did very well together, and Mr
Gazebee had gotten from his marriage quite as much as he expected
when he made it.

The Lady Rosina was very religious; and I do not know that she was
conspicuous in any other way, unless it might be that she somewhat
resembled her father in her temper. It was of the Lady Rosina that
the servants were afraid, especially with reference to that so-called
day of rest which, under her dominion, had become to many of them
a day of restless torment. It had not always been so with the Lady
Rosina; but her eyes had been opened by the wife of a great church
dignitary in the neighbourhood, and she had undergone regeneration.
How great may be the misery inflicted by an energetic, unmarried,
healthy woman in that condition,--a woman with no husband, or
children, or duties, to distract her from her work,--I pray that my
readers may never know.

The Lady Margaretta was her mother's favourite, and she was like her
mother in all things,--except that her mother had been a beauty. The
world called her proud, disdainful, and even insolent; but the world
was not aware that in all that she did she was acting in accordance
with a principle which had called for much self-abnegation. She had
considered it her duty to be a de Courcy and an earl's daughter at
all times; and consequently she had sacrificed to her idea of duty
all popularity, adulation, and such admiration as would have been
awarded to her as a well-dressed, tall, fashionable, and by no means
stupid young woman. To be at all times in something higher than they
who were manifestly below her in rank,--that was the effort that she
was ever making. But she had been a good daughter, assisting her
mother, as best she might, in all family troubles, and never repining
at the cold, colourless, unlovely life which had been vouchsafed to
her.

Alexandrina was the beauty of the family, and was in truth the
youngest. But even she was not very young, and was beginning to make
her friends uneasy lest she, too, should let the precious season of
hay-harvest run by without due use of her summer's sun. She had,
perhaps, counted too much on her beauty, which had been beauty
according to law rather than beauty according to taste, and had
looked, probably