of a vail.

With a very good understanding she never allowed herself one original
thought, or one spontaneous action. Her ideas, her language, and her
conduct were entirely regulated by the ideas, language, and conduct of
those who stood well in the world. Vanity in her was a steady, inward,
but powerfully pervading principle. It did not evaporate in levity or
indiscretion, but was the hidden, though forcible spring of her whole
course of action. She had all the gratification which vanity affords in
secret, and all the credit which its prudent operation procures in
public. She was apparently guilty of no excess of any kind. She had a
sober scale of creditable vices, and never allowed herself to exceed a
few stated degrees in any of them. She reprobated gaming, but could not
exist without cards. Masquerades she censured as highly extravagant and
dangerous, but when given by ladies of high quality, at their own
houses, she thought them an elegant and proper amusement. Though she
sometimes went to the play, she did not care for what passed on the
stage, for she confessed the chief pleasure the theatre afforded was to
reckon up when she came home, how many duchesses and countesses had
bowed to her across the house.

A complete despot at home, her arbitrariness is so vailed by correctness
of manner, and studied good breeding, that she obtains the credit of
great mildness and moderation. She is said not to love her daughters,
who come too near her in age, and go too much beyond her in beauty to be
forgiven; yet like a consummate politician, she is ever laboring for
their advancement. She has generally several schemes in hand, and always
one scheme under another, the under-plot ready to be brought forward if
the principal one fails. Though she encourages pretenders, yet she is
afraid to accept of a tolerable proposal, lest a better should present
itself; but if the loftier hope fails, she then contrives to lure back
the inferior offer. She can balance to a nicety, in the calculation of
chances, the advantages or disadvantages of a higher possibility against
a lower probability.

Though she neither wants reading nor taste, her mind is never
sufficiently disengaged to make her an agreeable companion. Her head is
always at work conjecturing the event of every fresh ball and every new
acquaintance. She can not even

Take her tea without a stratagem.

She set out in life with a very slender acquaintance, and clung for a