was Sir Everard St. Clare, brother to Camioli the bard, and late physician to her mother, was the usual object of ridicule to almost all of his acquaintance. Lady St. Clare in pearls and silver; Lauriana and Jessica, more fine if possible and more absurd than their mother; Mrs. Emmet a Lady from Cork, plaintive and reclining in white sattin and drapery; and all the young gentlemen of large property and fortune, whom all the young ladies were daily and hourly endeavouring to please, had no attraction for a mind like Calantha's. Coldly she therefore withdrew from the amusements natural to her age; yet it was from embarrassment, and not from coldness, that she avoided their society. Some favorites she already had:—the Abbess of Glenaa, St. Clara her niece, and above all Alice Mac Allain, a beautiful little girl of whom her mother had been fond, had already deeply interested her affections.
In the company of one or other of
