ness, while its being somewhat close, concealed that the cheek was less rounded than of yore, and, though the whole costume was exquisitely becoming, no one could say that it affected youthfulness. Lady Anne had too good taste for that. Still, any one who knew her not, might have thought, from the unusual care and pains bestowed on her appearance, that she herself meditated a conquest of their visiter. They would have been wrong in their surmise; Lady Anne was too intensely selfish herself, to suspect any one of being otherwise. Poor, with five unportioned daughters, no one could think of such a folly as marrying her. Her attention to the toilette of to-day had for motive the long habit of personal vanity, and a wish to show how little twelve years had altered her.
Not but what she had her own castle building, but it was with reference—she had decided that it would be the most proper thing in the world for Mr. Glentworth to marry Mary. She remembered him a grave silent young man, Mary was grave and silent too. She had never liked him, but that was of little moment now; Mary could not afford to be particular, she ought only to be thankful for such a chance.
"Mary," said her mother, on entering the drawing-room, where the elder girls were employed in those slight decorations which female taste knows so well how to give, "I beg that you will not over fatigue yourself; go and lie down on the sofa in my room. Fanchette will come to you when it is time for you to dress."
