This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
188
LADY ANNE GRANARD.

to pay the remainder of the rent for my house—it will be a convenience to me, and can make no difference to a young man who has no family to maintain. You must bring me this money entire—I can't do without it—mind what I say. Should Mr. Palmer not be at home, call on the gentleman who holds the house, and ask him yourself. Louisa will accompany you, to take away any awkwardness; and have it I must. You had better say nothing to Charles Penrhyn."

It will be evident, that whatever had been the vexation experienced on this occasion by Lady Anne, she had taken care to give her duteous and unoffending daughters much more than she had received, and which only arose from her own conduct. In the first place, they were bitterly disappointed that their good fortune and great exertion should have caused anger, when they had every reason to expect praise and pleasure as the result; and she had contrived to alarm them on the subject of their present; beyond these, her ladyship's observations went for nothing—"their best friends were the Palmers, dear old people; and who would have made poor Georgiana a settlement, but those kind, considerate old people, Sir Edward Hales and his sister? Mamma was very clever, but she did not know one half of the goodness there was in the world."

Neither did she know that the report of her grand contribution had already run through all ranks and conditions, gathering as it went the usual exaggera-