been taken for her, she took her niece Susanna with her.

CHAPTER II

Miss Mackenzie Goes to Littlebath

I fear that Miss Mackenzie, when she betook herself to Littlebath,
had before her mind's eye no sufficiently settled plan of life. She
wished to live pleasantly, and perhaps fashionably; but she also
desired to live respectably, and with a due regard to religion. How
she was to set about doing this at Littlebath, I am afraid she did
not quite know. She told herself over and over again that wealth
entailed duties as well as privileges; but she had no clear idea what
were the duties so entailed, or what were the privileges. How could
she have obtained any clear idea on the subject in that prison which
she had inhabited for so many years by her brother's bedside?

She had indeed been induced to migrate from London to Littlebath by
an accident which should not have been allowed to actuate her. She
had been ill, and the doctor, with that solicitude which doctors
sometimes feel for ladies who are well to do in the world, had
recommended change of air. Littlebath, among the Tantivy hills, would
be the very place for her. There were waters at Littlebath which she
might drink for a month or two with great advantage to her system. It
was then the end of July, and everybody that was anybody was going
out of town. Suppose she were to go to Littlebath in August, and stay
there for a month, or perhaps two months, as she might feel inclined.
The London doctor knew a Littlebath doctor, and would be so happy to
give her a letter. Then she spoke to the clergyman of the church she
had lately attended in London who also had become more energetic in
his assistance since her brother's death than he had been before,
and he also could give her a letter to a gentleman of his cloth at
Littlebath. She knew very little in private life of the doctor or of
the clergyman in London, but not the less, on that account, might
their introductions be of service to her in forming a circle of
acquaintance at Littlebath. In this way she first came to think of
Littlebath, and from this beginning she had gradually reached her
decision.

Another little accident, or two other little accidents, had nearly
induced her to remain in London--not in Arundel Street, which was to
her an odious locality, but in some small genteel house in or about
Brompton. She had written to the two baronets to announce to them
her brother's death, Tom Mackenzie, the s