To say that the army list, the county families, and the peerage, were at her fingers’ ends, may give some faint idea of her reading. As to writing, she was an untiring scribe, and deservedly merited a private secretary; corresponding with important acquaintances, with distant, aged, and wealthy connections, plying all with graceful, flattering letters, ditto photographs of Belle, and expensive Christmas cards; snatching ravenously at vague invitations; following up marching regiments, and anxiously courting the female relatives of rich young men. After ten years of knocking about Vanity Fair, the most pushing and plausible of vendors, her wares were no longer in their first freshness, and alas! still unsold; for Miss Isabel, though beautiful, was said to have a cold heart, a hot temper, and a head as empty as her purse. Connections had died, and made no sign. Correspondents were dumb; promising partners of Belle’s had revoked miserably and fled; fine acquaintances averted their eyes from what they considered a shabby old sponge, with a _passée_ daughter, and the poor-house loomed immediately in her foreground. Mrs. Redmond was at the end of her credit and resources, and struggling in an angry sea of debt, when Providence threw her a plank. Old Brian Redmond, one of her many irons in the fire, having quarrelled with all his near relatives, departed this life, leaving (to spite the proverbially hated heir-at-law) Noone House and lands “to the pleasant widow woman with the pretty daughter”--whom by the way he had never seen. Joy! Joy! one of the widow woman’s many sprats had caught a salmon at last!