“Perhaps it was Lady Susanna Quin--very likely it was Lady Mary Lowther--very possibly Miss Grant; you know she goes about with old Mrs. Grant in a yellow coach--but there are so many yellow coaches--the arms or the livery would settle the point at once.” These words, _the arms and the livery would settle the point at once,_ she repeated to herself perpetually, though without annexing any ideas to the words. In short, she was very feverish all night; and in the morning, though she endeavoured to rise, she was obliged to lie down again. She was confined to her bed for about a week: Lady Bradstone sent for the best physicians; and the young ladies, in the intervals of dressing and going out, whenever they could remember it, came into Miss Turnbull’s room to “hope she found herself better.” It was obvious to her that no one person in the house cared a straw about her, and she was oppressed with the sense of being an encumbrance to the whole family. Whilst she was alone she formed many projects for her future life, which she resolved to execute as soon as she should recover. She determined immediately to go down to her own house in the country, and to write to Ellen a recantation of all her fine lady errors. She composed, whilst she lay on her feverish pillow, twenty letters to her former friend, each of them more eloquent and magnanimous than the other: but in proportion as her fever left her, the activity of her imagination abated, and with it her eloquence and magnanimity. Her mind, naturally weak, and now enfeebled by disease, became quite passive, and received and yielded to the impressions made by external circumstances. New trains of ideas, perfectly different from those which had occupied her mind during her fever, and in the days preceding her illness, were excited during her convalescence. She lay listening to, or rather hearing, the conversation of the young Lady Bradstones. They used to come into her room at night, and stay for some time whilst they had their hair curled, and talked over the events of the day--whom they had met--what dresses they had worn--what matches were on the tapis, &c. They happened one night to amuse themselves with reading an old newspaper, in which they came to an account of a splendid masquerade, which had been given the preceding winter in London by a rich heiress. “Lord! what charming entertainments Miss Turnbull might give if she pleased. Why, do you know, she is richer than this woman,” whispered Lady Bab; “and she is of age now, you know. If I were she, I’m sure I’d have a house of my own, and the finest I could get in London. Now such a house as my aunt Pierrepoint’s--and servants--and carriages--and I would make myself of some consequence.”