room: but for music Lady Alicia had no ear, for dancing no liking, for drawing no taste; and French and Italian were, it must be owned, somewhat unnecessary to one who considered her own language an unnecessary fatigue. At eighteen she came out, beautiful she certainly was; highly accomplished—for Lady F., her mother's intimate friend, had several times confidentially mentioned the names of her masters; while Lady C. had expressed her approbation of the reserved dignity which led the daughter of one of our oldest families to shun that display which might gratify her vanity, but wounded her pride.
All was prepared for a ducal coronet at least; when the very day after her presentation, her father went out of town, and the ministry together; and three long useless years were wasted in the stately seclusion of Etheringhame Castle; where the mornings in summer were spent at a small table by the window, and in winter by the fire, putting in practice the only accomplishment that remained—like a ghost of the past—cutting out figures and landscapes in white paper, whose cold, colourless regularity were too much in sympathy with herself for her not to excel in the art. The middle of the day
