se; and, unrestrained in
the expenses of dress and equipage, chose, contrary to her maiden
practice, to be rather rich and splendid than gay, and to command that
attention by magnificence, which she no longer deigned to solicit by
rendering herself either agreeable or entertaining. One secret source of
her misery was, the necessity of showing deference to Lady Penelope
Penfeather, whose understanding she despised, and whose pretensions to
consequence, to patronage, and to literature, she had acuteness enough
to see through, and to contemn; and this dislike was the more grievous,
that she felt she depended a good deal on Lady Penelope's countenance
for the situation she was able to maintain even among the not very
select society of St. Ronan's Well; and that, neglected by her, she must
have dropped lower in the scale even there. Neither was Lady Penelope's
kindness to Lady Binks extremely cordial. She partook in the ancient and
ordinary dislike of single nymphs of a certain age, to those who made
splendid alliances under their very eye--and she more than suspected the
secret disaffection of the lady. But the name sounded well; and the
style in which Lady Binks lived was a credit to the place. So they
satisfied their mutual dislike with saying a few sharp things to each
other occasionally, but all under the mask of civility.

Such was Lady Binks; and yet, being such, her dress, and her equipage,
and carriages, were the envy of half the Misses at the Well, who, while
she sat disfiguring with sullenness her very lovely face, (for it was as
beautiful as her shape was exquisite,) only thought she was proud of
having carried her point, and felt herself, with her large fortune and
diamond bandeau, no fit company for the rest of the party. They gave
way, therefore, with meekness to her domineering temper, though it was
not the less tyrannical, that in her maiden state of hoyden-hood, she
had been to some of them an object of slight and of censure; and Lady
Binks had not forgotten the offences offered to Miss Bonnyrigg. But the
fair sisterhood submitted to her retaliations, as lieutenants endure the
bullying of a rude and boisterous captain of the sea, with the secret
determination to pay it home to their underlings, when they shall become
captains themselves.

In this state of importance, yet of penance, Lady Binks occupied her
place at the dinner-table, alternately disconcerted by some stupid
speech of her lord and master, and