immediately to the country, to a stout, healthy, broad-faced nurse, under whose care it grew and flourished; so that at three years old, when it was brought back to me, I could scarcely believe the chubby little thing was my own child. The same reasons which convinced me I ought not to nurse my own child, determined me, _à plus forte raison_, not to undertake its education. Lord Delacour could not bear the child, because it was not a boy. The girl was put under the care of a governess, who plagued my heart out with her airs and tracasseries for three or four years; at the end of which time, as she turned out to be Lord Delacour’s mistress in form, I was obliged--in form--to beg she would leave my house: and I put her pupil into better hands, I hope, at a celebrated academy for young ladies. There she will, at any rate, be better instructed than she could be at home. I beg your pardon, my dear, for this digression on nursing and schooling; but I wanted only to explain to you why it was that, when I was weary of the business, I still went on in a course of dissipation. You see I had nothing at home, either in the shape of husband or children, to engage my affections. I believe it was this ‘aching void’ in my heart which made me, after looking abroad some time for a bosom friend, take such a prodigious fancy to Mrs. Freke. She was just then coming into fashion; she struck me, the first time I met her, as being downright ugly; but there was a wild oddity in her countenance which made one stare at her, and she was delighted to be stared at, especially by me; so we were mutually agreeable to each other--I as starer, and she as staree. Harriot Freke had, without comparison, more assurance than any man or woman I ever saw; she was downright brass, but of the finest kind--Corinthian brass. She was one of the first who brought what I call _harum scarum_ manners into fashion. I told you that she had assurance--_impudence_ I should have called it, for no other word is strong enough. Such things as I have heard Harriot Freke say!---You will not believe it--but her conversation at first absolutely made me, like an old-fashioned fool, wish I had a fan to play with. But, to my astonishment, all this _took_ surprisingly with a set of fashionable young men. I found it necessary to _reform_ my manners. If I had not taken heart of grace, and publicly abjured the heresies of _false delicacy_, I should have been excommunicated. Lady Delacour’s sprightly elegance--allow me to speak of myself in the style in which the newspaper writers talk of me--Lady Delacour’s sprightly elegance was but pale, not to say _faded_ pink, compared with the scarlet of Mrs. Freke’s dashing audacity. As my rival, she would on certain ground have beat me hollow; it was therefore good policy to make her my friend: we joined forces, and nothing could stand against us. But I have no right to give myself credit for good policy in