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252 his sister, at whom he had been angry, but towards whom his gentler thoughts had been returning ever since Georgiana arrived, in the light of an extravagant, and, what was worse, an unfeeling and indelicate woman, forgetful of that circumstance which had inflicted anguish unutterable on her only brother, and rendered him for years a reckless and worthless man. Now that he was endeavouring to consign all the past to oblivion, and, by "leading a new life," establishing a new character, this act of madness and folly on her part could hardly fail to recall his great grief, his great error, and increase the difficulties of her own situation. To all this he added the irreparable injury she would do her daughters; he would venture to say, "no grandson of Sir Edward Hales would henceforward think for a moment of the degraded daughter of Lady Anne Granard." As these thoughts, or such as these, poured from his lips, his lady took care to give them the point and impression which might convert a passing pet into an abiding resentment; but, in order to convince him how sincerely she wished well to his innocent nieces, she seized the first pause in his rapid condemnation of the mother to say, "But we can save Georgiana, my dear, from a folly alike injurious to her health and her hopes—for hopes she has, poor thing, I am certain; and, if she abstains from the fancy fair when the rest of her family are there, will it not prove her superior sense of propriety and all that?"