as acceptable. This _passion_ for matrimony (for with her it had so
become, if not a disease) occupied her whole thoughts; but she attempted to
veil them by always pretending to be extremely sensitive and refined; to be
shocked at anything which had the slightest allusion to the "increase and
multiply;" and constantly lamented the extreme fragility of her
constitution; to which her athletic bony frame gave so determined a lie,
that her hearers were struck dumb with the barefaced assertion. Miss
Tavistock had kept up a correspondence with an old schoolmate, who had been
taken away early to join her friends in India, and had there married. As
her hopes of matrimony dwindled away, so did her affection for her old
friend appear, by her letters, to increase. At last, in answer to a letter,
in which she declared that she would like to come out, and (as she had long
made a resolution to continue single) adopt one of her friend's children,
and pass her days with them, she received an answer, stating how happy they
would be to receive her, and personally renew the old friendship, if indeed
she could be persuaded to venture upon so long and venturous a passage.
Whether this answer was sincere or not, Miss Tavistock took advantage of
the invitation; and writing to intimate her speedy arrival, took her
passage in the _Bombay Castle_.

The other three spinsters were sisters: Charlotte, Laura, and Isabel Revel,
daughters of the Honourable Mr Revel, a _roue_ of excellent family, who had
married for money, and had dissipated all his wife's fortune except the
marriage settlement of L600 per annum. Their mother was a selfish,
short-sighted, manoeuvring woman, whose great anxiety was to form
establishments for her daughters, or, in other terms, remove the expense of
their maintenance from her own to the shoulders of other people, very
indifferent whether the change might contribute to their happiness or not.
Mr Revel may be said to have long deserted his family; he lived nobody knew
where, and seldom called, unless it was to "raise the wind" upon his wife,
who by entreaties and threats was necessitated to purchase his absence by a
sacrifice of more than half her income. Of his daughters he took little
notice, when he _did_ make his appearance; and if so, it was generally in
terms more calculated to raise the blush of indignant modesty than to
stimulate the natural feelings of affection of a daughter towards a parent.
Their mother, whose inc