It was the fate of Anna Maria to love this man; and while the cold, stiff manners of the beautiful Miss Wetheral, chilled the approach of distant admirers, her heart was sincerely and really given to Tom Pynsent. It is in vain to argue upon love, which arises from a thousand causes unconnected with personal appearance. Love takes a thousand forms, and defies the power of reason. When Shakespeare gave the "Weaver" charms in the eyes of Titania, he illustrated at once its blindness and its intensity. Tom Pynsent might have sought and won the heart and taste of Miss Wycherly, who regularly attended the hunt and broke in her own carriage horses, but who could suppose he had power to captivate the gentle and graceful Miss Wetheral? Lady Spottiswoode was celebrated for the agreeability and number of her carpet dances. Every fortnight produced a gay society at her large mansion in Shrewsbury; and at her parties the county families mixed occasionally with the more humble inhabitants of the town. It was this very mixture which gave Lady Spottiswoode's parties their decided superiority over those of the neighbourhood; for at her house she possessed the advantage of numbers, and she congregated more youth, beauty, and novelty than her country neighbours could ever boast at their _élite_, but smaller, and less pleasant meetings. Shrewsbury, at the time of Miss Wetheral's introduction, contained many families whose claims to gentility might compete with their own, but whose income excluded them from distant and expensive society. They were always assembled at Lady Spottiswoode's, and, from the variety and novelty which sparkled in her drawing-rooms, her parties were considered the most delightful reunions in the country. No one ever stayed away from Lady Spottiswoode's, who had the power of locomotion; and it was at Lady Spottiswoode's assemblies that Tom Pynsent carried on his plans for lowering the pride of Julia Wetheral. Anna Maria beheld in the keenest pain, but with unaltered expression of countenance, his unceasing persecution of her sister: whichever way Julia moved, Tom Pynsent was beside her, or before her; his eyes were, eternally watching her actions, and, when Julia was not his partner, he declined joining the dancers. If Julia observed his fixed determination to be attentive, she heeded it not, for she was dancing and flirting with Lord Ennismore, and her heart disdained the man who had deserted her sister, after a long course of ungenerous flirtation, which meant nothing, and which had injured the peace of its object.