Lady Wetheral had discovered Thompson's flight when Sir John and Christobelle returned to Wetheral, and her indignation was extreme. To be left by a menial in that offensive manner was degrading; but that Thompson should have flown from her duties, to enter matrimony, was disgusting. Thompson marrying! and with all the mystery of an heiress too! It was an insult she had not believed Thompson would have presumed to offer; but every thing was wrong, every thing was most wretched since her daughters had married. What was now left to her but poor Sir John, who was half a methodist, and an awkward girl, who was as learned as she was plain? It was very odd her intention to visit Bedinfield had been frustrated. She supposed all her children intended to decline her visits. With these ideas and feelings, it was not to be supposed Lady Wetheral could be happy; and her disappointed mind preyed upon her health and temper. Christobelle was the victim of this state of things; she could never be sufficiently attentive or sufficiently agreeable; she was tiresome, awkward, or learned; she was to be an old maid, a nuisance in society, an arguing, philosophical excrescence, whom people would avoid and detest; she had not half the sense and conversation of poor, dear Thompson. Christobelle's spirits fled under constant and frivolous exertion of the power of tormenting. She was seated in the boudoir, with Lady Wetheral, one morning at work, not many days after the scene at Ripley; the irritability of her temper was increased by the recollection of former days and former employments. She commenced her usual complaints.-- "I think I am worse in health and spirits when I sit in this room; it puts me in mind of my poor daughters, who are gone. I am now quite deserted and forlorn; not one of them invites me to their home!" Christobelle mentioned Brierly and the affection of its inmates. "Fiddlestick, Bell! you are always quoting Brierly! I don't like Boscawen. I have no opinion of a man who allows his wife to be driven by a pair of horses, when he can afford four--I dislike avarice. And Isabel would make me so nervous, by carrying a great heavy baby about, and disordering her dress! I shall never visit Brierly." "The Pynsents will be home soon, mamma." "What's that to me, Bell? You don't suppose I shall stay at Hatton, and hear Mrs. Pynsent's remarks about Ripley, and Clara's folly in coming to an open rupture with her husband? The Tom Pynsents should have accepted Hatton when it was first proposed to them. I shall not visit there till Anna Maria is mistress of the property." "But you will go to poor Clara, mamma."