"You are right, Lady Rotheles, quite right. As to looking at the paper which shews Lady Anne in so unamiable and blameable a point of view, I shall not; so take it out of my sight, and burn it as soon as you please. And I beg of you, if any more nonsense about her and her daughters appears in the papers, let them be kept out of my sight. It is not my strength of mind (exert it as I may) that will prevent me from experiencing dyspepsia, if such follies as these are exhibited before me."
Although Lady Rotheles had thus with good effect defeated Georgiana's wishes and hopes with respect to her mother, yet she could lay the "flattering unction to her soul" that she wished to promote the poor girl's happiness by marrying her to Lieutenant Hales. The venerable Sir Edward was one of those persons whose acquaintance, or rather whose friendship, Lord Rotheles would give the world to gain. In days past he had loved the son and honoured the father, and he believed that he had been held in sincere regard by both. It was a consolation to believe that Lord Meersbrook, in his glorious but short career, knew little or nothing of his own; but Sir Edward must, for he had an estate which joined the Rotheles property, and occasionally brought him into the neighbourhood, when the doors of the castle were always thrown open to him, but never yet had he accepted an invitation, though it had always been refused so courteously as to justify the repetition. It was now
