CHAPTER IX.
"Nobody dies but somebody's glad of it."
Three Courses and a Dessert.
We differ from our ancestors in many things—in none more than in cases of sentiment. Formerly, it was your susceptible school-girl, "your novel-reading miss"—now, women only grow romantic after forty. Your young beauty calculates the chances of her Grecian nose, her fine eyes, and her exquisite complexion—your young heiress dwells on the claims of her rent-roll, or the probabilities of her funded property: it is their mothers who run away—their aunts who marry handsome young men without a shilling. Well, the prudence of youth is very like selfishness, and the romance of age very like folly.
Mrs. Arundel was arrived at the romantic age; and Emily, on her return from a fortnight's stay at Norville, was somewhat sur-
