At Glenmore House there was of course assembled, on the present evening, the Tilneys, Leinsengens, Tenderdens, Boileaus, Gascoignes, De Cheres, and the rest of the _élite_ who formed the _société choisie_ of Lady Tilney; and as the latter looked around the apartments, and only saw there those whom in fact _she_ had bidden, she was gratified with this fresh accession of arbitrary power, and considered it no small triumph thus to have set the seal of her supremacy over the yielding Lady Glenmore, who might, under other circumstances, if she had not been an ally, have proved a formidable enemy. As it was, Lady Tilney expressed the sense of her satisfaction by a thousand _cajoleries_, which one woman knows so well to practise upon another when it suits her purpose. She praised Lady Glenmore's dress (that touchstone of female friendship), although she could not help saying apart to Lady Tenderden, that it was a pity Lady Glenmore still persisted in her _baroque_ modes, which in fact were no modes at all, but contrivances of her own. To herself, Lady Tilney however next observed, that Lady Glenmore's choice of society was excellent, and that the manner in which she had arranged her rooms was managed with infinite taste. These approving, encouraging speeches, from one so versed in the knowledge of the world, and so much looked up to as the arbiter of the elegancies of life, together with all the other incense of flattery which was lavished upon Lady Glenmore on every side, could not fail of taking some effect on her mind. Young, fair, unformed in character, brought up by fond and indulgent parents, who thought she never could err, and who had miserably neglected to implant those religious principles in her breast which alone give stability to character, which impart strength by making us aware of our own weakness, Lady Glenmore was launched on a scene where dangers surrounded her in every shape, and which she was wholly unprepared either to foresee or to sustain. Gentle, amiable,--as yet pure, and unsuspicious of evil, from being herself free from it,--she was a fitting subject to be moulded into any shape by any evil-designing person that knew gradually to undermine her innocence without alarming her fears. Lady Glenmore's situation in the world, therefore, with a husband incessantly employed in public duties, consequently often absent, while she was thrown in the midst of a peculiar society, which became, from various circumstances, her only sphere of action, was one of infinite temptation and peril.