par excellence. Even among the most experienced and discriminating of men, she rarely allowed the élite of the high-born or distinguished to escape her temporary allurements, so that she was the absolute horror, alike of the designing, whose baits she rendered nugatory, and the innocent attached ones, whose expectations she blighted, and whose young hearts were lacerated by the perfidy of those whom she misled. Of course she was a dangerous woman, from whom many would shrink, and certainly not one to whom Lady Anne could for a moment commit her daughters, either on the score of friendship, or example. Of the former there was little fear, for she had neither invited nor noticed any one of them more than she could help, and poor Louisa had been her aversion, evidently on the score of that resplendent beauty, which belongs exclusively to its youthfulness. Lady Penrhyn was quite handsome enough to have spared one ingredient in her cup of fascination, but, unfortunately, having been married in her teens, she expected to live in them, and, never being reminded by the trials to which her sex is subject, of the flight of years, and the inroads of suffering, expected time to stand still, and the first bloom of existence (the blue on the plum) to remain as stationary as her own taste, for the pleasures of flirtation.
In addition to these unamiable characteristics which insured a certainty that she would thwart any good fortune likely to befall her remaining daughters, Lady
