Page:Austen - Sense and Sensibility, vol. II, 1811.djvu/265

 not return till late in the evening; and the Miss Dashwoods, at the particular request of the Middletons, spent the whole of every day in Conduit-street. For their own comfort they would much rather have remained, at least all the morning, in Mrs. Jennings’s house; but it was not a thing to be urged against the wishes of everybody. Their hours were therefore made over to Lady Middleton and the two Miss Steeles, by whom their company was in fact as little valued, as it was professedly sought.

They had too much sense to be desirable companions to the former; and by the latter they were considered with a jealous eye, as intruding on their ground, and sharing the kindness which they wanted to monopolize. Though nothing could be more polite than Lady Middleton’s our