else could her daughters, after all the sums that had been risked upon them, hope to be advantageously established? How otherwise could they preserve what her friend Lady Jane Granville so justly styled the patronage of fashion? When success proved Mrs. Falconer to be right, “Now, Commissioner Falconer! Now!” How she triumphed, and how she talked! Her sons all in such favour--her daughters in such fashion! No party without the Miss Falconers!--Miss Falconers must sing--Miss Falconers must play--Miss Falconers must dance, or no lady of a house could feel herself happy, or could think she had done her duty--no piano, no harp could draw such crowds as the Miss Falconers. It was the ambition among the fashionable men to dance with the Miss Falconers, to flirt with the Miss Falconers. “Not merely flirting, ma’am,” as Mrs. Falconer said, and took proper pains should be heard, “but several serious proposals from very respectable quarters:” however, none _yet_ exactly what she could resolve to accept for the girls--she looked high for them, she owned--she thought she had a right to look high. Girls in fashion should not take the first offers--they should hold up their heads: why should they not aspire to rank, why not to title, as well as to fortune? Poor Petcalf! General Petcalf’s son had been for some time, as it was well known, desperately in love with Miss Georgiana Falconer; but what chance had he now? However, he was to be _managed_: he was useful sometimes, as a partner, “to whom one may say one is engaged when a person one does not choose to dance with asks for the honour of one’s hand--useful sometimes to turn over the leaves of the music-book--useful always as an attendant in public places--useful, in short, to be exhibited as a captive; for one captive leads to another conquest.” And Miss Arabella Falconer, too, could boast her conquests, though nobody merely by looking at her would have guessed it: but she was a striking exemplification of the truth of Lady Jane Granville’s maxim, that fashion, like Venus’s girdle, can beautify any girl, let her be ever so ugly. And now the Falconer family having risen and succeeded beyond their most sanguine hopes by a combination of lucky circumstances, and by adherence to their favourite system, we leave them fortified in their principles, and at the height of prosperity. CHAPTER XI. Fortune, as if she had been piqued by Mr. Percy’s disdain, and jealous of his professed reliance upon the superior power of her rival, Prudence, seemed now determined to humble him and all his family, to try if she could not force him to make some of the customary sacrifices of principle to propitiate her favour.