and, seeing she was not the lady he sought, he turned towards the opposite centre, and fixed his eyes on Lady Anne. "Could that fair, tall, gauky girl be the Georgiana of whom Isabella was so fond of talking? or that round dumpling be the married sister they praised so highly? Impossible!"
But the lady par excellence was really Lady Anne, faded but still beautiful, and wearing, though with a constrained and artificial air, those smiles with which she had been wont to greet him at Granard Park, where she was most remarkable for the haughtiness which offended, or the condescension which mortified, the country friends of her husband. "Poor Lady Anne! times were changed as well as circumstances; but she was still a fine woman, and dressed most admirably and expensively. Her daughters had been needlessly alarmed for her: 'so much the better.'"
Riccardini had time to make these silent comments, as there was a closely wedged circle round the stand so polite a man could not find easy to pierce, and the thoughts of purchasing had not entered his mind; for though he had been told that the fancy fair was for a charitable institution, no farther explanation was given. He was amused by the pains taken to dispose of their wares by the ladies, especially Lady Penrhyn, who had been about to return to her own stand, when she perceived the fine-looking foreigner approach Lady Anne's, and
