the wealth would all be there. Then came the first great decisive
triumph. Overtures of love and friendship were made from the other
side. Would Lady Anna consent to become the Countess Lovel, all
animosities might be buried, and everything be made pleasant,
prosperous, noble, and triumphant!

It is easy to fill with air a half-inflated bladder. It is already so
buoyant with its own lightness, that it yields itself with ease to
receive the generous air. The imagination of the woman flew higher
than ever it had flown when the proposition came home to her in all
its bearings. Of course it had been in her mind that her daughter
should marry well;--but there had been natural fears. Her child had
not been educated, had not lived, had not been surrounded in her
young days, as are those girls from whom the curled darlings are wont
to choose their wives. She would too probably be rough in manner,
ungentle in speech, ungifted in accomplishments, as compared with
those who from their very cradles are encompassed by the blessings of
wealth and high social standing. But when she looked at her child's
beauty, she would hope. And then her child was soft, sweet-humoured,
winning in all her little ways, pretty even in the poor duds which
were supplied to her mainly by the generosity of the tailor. And so
she would hope, and sometimes despair;--and then hope again. But she
had never hoped for anything so good as this. Such a marriage would
not only put her daughter as high as a Lovel ought to be, but would
make it known in a remarkable manner to all coming ages that she, she
herself, she the despised and slandered one,--who had been treated
almost as woman had never been treated before,--was in very truth the
Countess Lovel by whose income the family had been restored to its
old splendour.

And so the longing grew upon her. Then, almost for the first time,
did she begin to feel that it was necessary for the purposes of her
life that the girl whom she loved so thoroughly, should be a creature
in her hands, to be dealt with as she pleased. She would have had her
daughter accede to the proposed marriage even before she had seen
Lord Lovel, and was petulant when her daughter would not be as clay
in the sculptor's hand. But still the girl's refusal had been but as
the refusal of a girl. She should not have been as are other girls.
She should have known better. She should have understood what the
peculiarity of her position demanded. But it