"If she had wanted any sum which your purse or mine, united, could have supplied, she would have demanded it unquestionably; but she would, on no account, choose Mr. Glentworth to know her distress, for she fears him as much as my uncle Rotheles. I greatly dread her applying to the Marquess of Wentworthdale, which would be a kind of sale of dear Georgiana; it is horrible to think of."
"Finish your letter, dear Mary; something consolatory may arise in it."
Mary glanced over the letter, "She says Viscount Meersbrook, the brother of Lieutenant Hales (that lover of Georgiana whom mamma peremptorily refused), took our house for three months, and paid beforehand, that he is intimate with the Palmers, and that at Christmas Lord Rotheles will reduce mamma's allowance one half. Now, as she always spends her money before she gets it, you know, what will become of her when Christmas comes? Helen says she gave a note to Mr. Palmer to repay the money in six months, which I am sure she cannot do."
"I wonder he would take a note from mamma."
"I do not, for, although he is a generous man, he is a regular man; and I have heard him say, more than once, that Lady Sarah Butterlip had taught him a lesson, as to lending money, that would last him his life in the way by which she cheated his friend, Mrs. Clare, of Canterbury. And it always struck me, and often very painfully, that in his own mind he was com-
