Anne that she had been perfectly right in her proceedings, since, by quashing all idle hopes, both parties would see the necessity of conquering their foolish passion. In the mean time, she had a something not very unlike pleasure in the pain she was inflicting, for she felt that both parties merited punishment—Arthur for daring to suppose a man in his situation could love and marry, as his brother might do; and Georgiana for being such an idiot as to think of him after her warning. She must positively break with the Palmers; there was nothing else for it—they were so ignorant, and had such strange notions.
But, although Mr. Palmer gave her the opportunity, for he was certainly in high dudgeon, and accounted for the absence of Georgiana as arising from "the whim of her mother, since Mrs. Palmer herself had planned the party, and was the last woman living to deprive the young of any rational pleasures," still her ladyship took no steps towards a quarrel. She had the consolation of knowing that any offence given to her dignity could be avenged on the delinquent who caused it, an act of justice which could not fail to be consolatory, since every one of her daughters had at times stood in stead of "guid King James's whipping-boy," when circumstances arose to disturb the equanimity of Lady Anne's imperious and irascible temper.
The house was crowded, the entertainment exquisite, and, to the brothers, it was so absolute a novelty,
