The young ladies never discouraged their attendants from saying all the ill-natured things that they could devise of Miss Turnbull, and they invented a variety of methods of tormenting her. Lady Gabriella found out that Almeria was horridly ugly and awkward; Lady Agnes _quizzed_ her perpetually; and the Ladies Bab and Kitty played upon her innumerable practical jokes. She was astonished to find in high life a degree of vulgarity of which her country companions would have been ashamed: but all such things in high life go under the general term _dashing_. These young ladies were _dashers_. Alas! perhaps foreigners and future generations may not know the meaning of the term! Our heroine’s temper was not proof against the trials to which it was hourly exposed: perhaps the consciousness that she was not born to the situation in which she now moved, joined to her extreme anxiety to be thought genteel and fashionable, rendered her peculiarly irritable when her person and manners were attacked by ladies of quality. She endeavoured to conciliate her young enemies by every means in her power, and at length she found a method of pleasing them. They were immoderately fond of baubles, and they had not money enough to gratify this taste. Miss Turnbull at first, with great timidity, begged Lady Gabriella’s acceptance of a ring, which seemed particularly to catch her fancy: the facility with which the ring was accepted, and the favourable change it produced, as if by magic, in her ladyship’s manners towards our heroine, encouraged her to try similar experiments upon the other sisters. She spared not ear-rings, crosses, brooches, pins, and necklaces; and the young ladies in return began to show her all the friendship which can be purchased by such presents--or by any presents. Even whilst she rejoiced at the change in their behaviour, she could not avoid despising them for the cause to which she knew it must be attributed; nor did she long enjoy even the temporary calm procured by these peace-offerings; for the very same things which propitiated the daughters offended the mother. Lady Bradstone one morning insisted upon Lady Gabriella’s returning a necklace, which she had received from Almeria; and her ladyship informed Miss Turnbull, at the same time, with an air of supreme haughtiness, that “she could not possibly permit _her_ daughters to accept such valuable presents from any but their own relations; that if the Lady Bradstones did not know what became them, it was her duty to teach them propriety.”