Mrs. Ready was a woman of great pretensions, and had acquired an influence among her own set by assuming a superiority to which, in reality, she had not the slightest claim. She considered herself a beauty—a wit—a person of extraordinary genius, and possessed of great literary taste. The knowledge of a few botanical names and scientific terms, which she sported on all occasions, had conferred upon her the title of a learned woman; while she talked with the greatest confidence of her acquirements. _Her_ paintings—_her_ music—_her_ poetry, were words constantly in her mouth. A few wretched daubs, some miserable attempts at composition, and various pieces of music, played without taste, and in shocking bad time, constituted all her claims to literary distinction. Her confident boasting had so imposed upon the good credulous people among whom she moved, that they really believed her to be the talented being she pretended. A person of very moderate abilities can be spiteful; and Mrs. Ready was so censorious, and said when offended such bitter things, that her neighbours tolerated her impertinence out of a weak fear, lest they might become the victims of her slanderous tongue. Though living in the same house with her husband, whose third wife she was, they had long been separated, only meeting at their joyless meals. Mrs. Ready considered her husband a very stupid animal, and did not fail to make both him and her friends acquainted with her opinion. “There is a fate in these things,” she observed, “or you would never see a person of _my_ superior intellect united to a creature like _that_.” The world recognised a less important agency in the ill-starred union. Mrs. Ready was poor, and had already numbered thirty years, when she accepted the hand of her wealthy and despised partner. No wonder that Flora, who almost adored her husband, and was a woman of simple habits and pretensions, should dislike Mrs. Ready: it would have been strange indeed if persons so differently constituted, could have met without antagonism. Mrs. Ready’s harsh unfeminine voice and manners; her assumption of learning and superiority, without any real title to either, were very offensive to a proud sensitive mind, which rejected with disdain the patronage of such a woman. Flora had too much self-respect, not to say _vanity_, to tolerate the insolence of Mrs. Ready. She had met all her advances towards a closer intimacy with marked coldness; which, instead of repelling, seemed only to provoke a repetition of the vulgar, forcing familiarity, from which she intuitively shrank. “Mrs. Lyndsay,” she was wont to say, when that lady was absent, “is a young person of some literary taste, and with the advice and assistance of a friend (herself of course) she may one day become an accomplished woman.”