Page:Lady Anne Granard 3.pdf/176

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174
LADY ANNE GRANARD.

entirely abandoned for the latter: notwithstanding, every day Lady Anne inquired what she was doing not to shew herself at the Opera, and enable her friends to pay her due honour. She had to spend a quiet day with dear Louisa, learn to know more of her excellent husband and admire her handsome boy, devote another most happy one to the Palmers, and meet there the kind Gooches, who had proved so much the friends of her beloved sister in her day of trial; her choice in carriages was positively demanded by her husband, and her taste called upon by Lord Allerton, who found his modest, considerate bride averse to giving an opinion, lest she should increase his expence, and considering every thing she found on the spot only more handsome than she desired. She did not discover, though Isabella did, that he had very naturally set his heart on changing the general appearance of things, in order to erase from his memory its written sorrows, and enter into a new existence with that amiable woman, who every day grew dearer to his heart, and more approved by his judgment.

How different this to the solitude of Pisa! to the long, anxious time when her husband was wandering in search of health and peace, and the pains of widowhood were suspended over her head in a strange country, where she had not a single friend, and her extreme youth and unprotected situation