Of all these industrious researches Miss Crawley had the full benefit.

Mrs. Rawdon Crawley was the daughter of an opera-girl. She had danced

herself. She had been a model to the painters. She was brought up as

became her mother's daughter. She drank gin with her father, &c. &c.

It was a lost woman who was married to a lost man; and the moral to be

inferred from Mrs. Bute's tale was, that the knavery of the pair was

irremediable, and that no properly conducted person should ever notice

them again.

These were the materials which prudent Mrs. Bute gathered together in

Park Lane, the provisions and ammunition as it were with which she

fortified the house against the siege which she knew that Rawdon and

his wife would lay to Miss Crawley.

But if a fault may be found with her arrangements, it is this, that she

was too eager: she managed rather too well; undoubtedly she made Miss

Crawley more ill than was necessary; and though the old invalid

succumbed to her authority, it was so harassing and severe, that the

victim would be inclined to escape at the very first chance which fell

in her way. Managing women, the ornaments of their sex--women who

order everything for everybody, and know so much better than any person

concerned what is good for their neighbours, don't sometimes speculate

upon the possibility of a domestic revolt, or upon other extreme

consequences resulting from their overstrained authority.

Thus, for instance, Mrs. Bute, with the best intentions no doubt in the

world, and wearing herself to death as she did by foregoing sleep,

dinner, fresh air, for the sake of her invalid sister-in-law, carried

her conviction of the old lady's illness so far that she almost managed

her into her coffin. She pointed out her sacrifices and their results

one day to the constant apothecary, Mr. Clump.

"I am sure, my dear Mr. Clump," she said, "no efforts of mine have been

wanting to restore our dear invalid, whom the ingratitude of her nephew

has laid on the bed of sickness. I never shrink from personal

discomfort: I never refuse to sacrifice myself."

"Your devotion, it must be confessed, is admirable," Mr. Clump says,

with a low bow; "but--"

"I have scarcely closed my eyes since my arrival: I give up sleep,

health, every comfort, to my sense of duty. When my poor James was in

the smallpox, did I allow any hireling to nurse him? No."

"You did what became an excellent mother, my dear Madam--the best of

mothers; but--"




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