CHAPTER XXXV.
We left Lady Anne Granard in that state of mixed good and evil—the misery arising from numerous duns, and the felicity arising from actual possession of a pretty sum wherewith to go to Brighton—which is a very common lot in life, and by no means confined to persons distinguished by rank or fashion. Many people of very humble pretensions put money in their purses, and set out to watering-places, when they ought to have stayed at home and paid that which they magnanimously determined to spend; leaving the small fry below them in the scale of society to flounder in the mud as they can, whilst they magnanimously ape their betters, by "doing that which they ought not to do," and "leaving undone that which they ought to have done." In the present progressive state of human affairs, a duchess could not sport a new folly, or practice a new sin, for a fortnight, without being closely imitated even by shopkeepers' wives. Vanity furnishes the steam, fashion lays the railroads, and away we all run on the "road to ruin," reckless whom we crush
