em comfortable. His father was rendered easy by such an assurance,
and Mr. John Dashwood had then leisure to consider how much there
might prudently be in his power to do for them.

[Illustration: _His son's son, a child of four years old._]

He was not an ill-disposed young man, unless to be rather cold hearted
and rather selfish is to be ill-disposed: but he was, in general, well
respected; for he conducted himself with propriety in the discharge of
his ordinary duties. Had he married a more amiable woman, he might
have been made still more respectable than he was: he might even have
been made amiable himself; for he was very young when he married, and
very fond of his wife. But Mrs. John Dashwood was a strong caricature
of himself; more narrow-minded and selfish.

When he gave his promise to his father, he meditated within himself to
increase the fortunes of his sisters by the present of a thousand
pounds a-piece. He then really thought himself equal to it. The
prospect of four thousand a-year, in addition to his present income,
besides the remaining half of his own mother's fortune, warmed his
heart, and made him feel capable of generosity. "Yes, he would give
them three thousand pounds: it would be liberal and handsome! It would
be enough to make them completely easy. Three thousand pounds! he
could spare so considerable a sum with little inconvenience." He
thought of it all day long, and for many days successively, and he did
not repent.

No sooner was his father's funeral over, than Mrs. John Dashwood,
without sending any notice of her intention to her mother-in-law,
arrived with her child and their attendants. No one could dispute her
right to come; the house was her husband's from the moment of his
father's decease; but the indelicacy of her conduct was so much the
greater, and to a woman in Mrs. Dashwood's situation, with only common
feelings, must have been highly unpleasing. But in _her_ mind there
was a sense of honor so keen, a generosity so romantic, that any
offence of the kind, by whomsoever given or received, was to her a
source of immovable disgust. Mrs. John Dashwood had never been a
favourite with any of her husband's family; but she had had no
opportunity, till the present, of showing them with how little
attention to the comfort of other people she could act when occasion
required it.

So acutely did Mrs. Dashwood feel this ungracious behaviour, and so
earnestly did she despise her daughter-