of her obligation, being never very vividly impressed, vanished into thin air, thereby enabling her to meet Mr. Palmer with much of the coolness to which he had lately affixed a very unseemly epithet.
"You are always a very good neighbour, Mr. Palmer, and, I understand from my daughters, are willing to lend me a hundred or a hundred and twenty pounds."
"Say a hundred and fifty if you are pressed, Lady Anne, but it must be on certain conditions."
"Helen said nothing of conditions, but of course I must submit. What are they?"
"That you permit Helen to be with Mrs. Penrhyn during her confinement."
"Of course, I always intended that she should."
"I would also suggest, though I do not insist, on the propriety of remaining in London until her safety is ascertained."
"I fear I cannot promise that, as Pigget has let my house."
"I have taken it for a friend, whom I will accommodate in my own until you are enabled to set out to her satisfaction, as believing you have an interest in her. The laws of fashion do not bind people of rank to forget the ties of consanguinity and affection, for I could point out numerous instances where mothers really love their children, and wives their husbands. Who was ever so long and so tenderly a nurse as the late Duchess of Northumberland? and I am old
