nament would have appeared to her the more rational exercise of his liberality. Had he been older, she might have calculated on his death and its attendant legacies; that was, however, out of the question: she could not look forward to the death of one some years younger than herself. From thinking him useless, Lady Anne soon began to consider him detrimental; his constant attendance kept off others.
On this point her penetration was assisted by a sneer or two of Lady Penrhyn's, who, struck with Mr. Glentworth's appearance, had accepted the invitation to join a family party to Richmond, only to find attention devoted to those Granard girls, as she called them. Like all married women, who make flirtation the sole business of life, she had a natural antipathy to the young, pretty, and unmarried. While she affected to despise the simplicity and want of finish in the perhaps blushing and embarrassed girl, she was, in reality, the rival that she most dreaded. A deep and sincere attachment was the first thing that taught a man to set a just value on the flutter of gratified vanity, in which her power consisted. Besides, she envied her the bloom and freshness, which she had lost for ever—the bloom and freshness of the heart, even more than the cheek. Intimate as she was with Lady Anne, she would not but see how little the Misses Granard had of the ordinary pleasures of their age—but it never entered into her head to add to them—had one of their sweet
