Everards, and other humdrum persons, who had welcomed her first to her new position. When she had yawned through one or two dinner parties, painfully got up for Mrs. Eastwood’s sake, to make the best of a bad business, by the society which frequented The Elms, Amanda had declared her determination to have nothing more to do with “Frederick’s old-fashioned set.” They were not much in sympathy with her, to tell the truth; and dinners at Richmond, with Lord Hunterston and his kind in attendance, were a great deal more to her liking. Amanda held, in fact, the opinion which poor little Innocent had expressed innocently as a reflection of the sentiments of her father. She disliked women. They were all jealous of her beauty, she believed; they were her critics or her rivals--never her friends; spite was their chief characteristic; envy their main sentiment. The men of Amanda’s set were of her opinion--so are a great many clever persons, it must be allowed--at least, in books. Therefore it is not to be supposed that Amanda looked forward with more distinct gratification than that felt by the ladies at The Elms to her periodical dinner. She put on her handsomest dresses and her finest talk to dazzle them, and she made it a subject for her peculiar wit for some time before and after. “I am going to dine with my old mother-in-law,” she would say to the young men, few in number at this season of the year, who filled her little drawing-room in the afternoon. “Such a set of old guys she has about her, to be sure. Why she should insist upon having me, I can’t imagine, for she hates me, of course. But duty before everything. I shall have to go.” “Why should you have to go?” said one. “And by Jove, I’ll come to-morrow to hear all about it!” said another. The lively sympathy of this chorus did Mrs. Frederick good. “Oh, you shall hear the whole account,” she said. “It’s like Noah’s Ark. There is the regular clergyman, and some old fogies of lawyers, and a horrible man called John Vane----” “Oh, come, Mrs. Eastwood, John Vane’s no end of a good fellow. I know him as well as I know myself,” said one of the interlocutors. “That may be--but he ain’t a good fellow at The Elms. The Elms! only fancy. Doesn’t it sound like Hampstead Heath? He is related to the mad girl I told you of--and he’s after my prim little puss of a sister-in-law, in a quiet way; for she is engaged, if you please, and oh! does give herself such airs on the strength of it. But the women! You should see the women! In old silks and satins that belonged to their grandmothers, with turbans and I don’t know what--all looking as if they could eat me.” “That, of course,” said one of Amanda’s court, with a laugh.