Thus exposed, she risked becoming the victim of any designing persons who found it their amusement or their interest to render her the subject of licentious animadversion. Where almost every event, as in the kind of life described, bears some analogy, little variety occurs to mark the progress of time. One intrigue resembles another; one slander is like its neighbour; one _soirée_ is a specimen of all: and unless, indeed, some defiance of morality more glaring than usual, some solecism in a marriage or a ball, a death or a breakfast, take place, there is little for the chronicler of the system to register in his page. Ministers had looked forward to rest after the burthen of the session; the nobles had gone to their country seats to enjoy the beauties of the "sere and yellow leaf," there to renew the dissipations of the town. Hither, too, the invited _intrigant_ had followed the object of his present pursuit, to tell in shady bowers the tale, so often told before to others, of treacherous love; while the sportsman, with more open and more honest if not nobler aim, hied him to moors and highlands in pursuit of his ruling passion. If, during the last moments of the waning season, nothing of stronger character had occurred, on Lady Glenmore's and Mr. Leslie Winyard's part, to attract the particular notice of the circle in which their _liaison_ was matter of conversation, still there was no relaxation of _his_ attentions, or of _her_ apparent preference, to justify the belief that he had relinquished his pursuit, or that she had discarded him. Lady Tilney, therefore, continually urged Lady Tenderden to the necessity of adopting the measures she had proposed; and the latter, having satisfied herself that no unpleasant responsibility was likely to attach to her, consented to fill her allotted part in the measure, and propose to Lady Glenmore to accompany her on a tour. "What do you do with yourself this summer?" said Lady Tenderden to the latter, as she was sitting _tête-à-tête_ with her one morning. "Indeed I do not in the least know what are Glenmore's plans; but I should hope we shall go to the country somewhere, for I begin to feel that my health suffers from the racket of a town life. But whatever _he_ chooses I shall like best, for nothing would do me any good if he were not to be of the party." "_Oh! quelle enfantillage!_ Well! I hoped you had chased away that bad habit of being always in de leading-string. What! _you_ a minister's wife, and suppose that he is to follow you up _stair_ and down _stair en nourrisson_ all your life! My dear, how would de state be taken care of after this fashion?" "True," said Lady Glenmore, sighing, "and I am now used to be alone." In fact Lady Tenderden knew that these words were uttered more from habit than from feeling them in the painful degree in which they would once have been spoken; and she replied,