ssed with _une fureur de se marier_; and, as a last resource, had
resolved to go out to India, where she had been informed that "any thing
white" was 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 pre tending to be extremely sensitive
and refined; to be shocked at any thing 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 600 pounds 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 intreaties 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 m