Page:Lady Anne Granard 2.pdf/4

2 never to resign her own will, diminish her own extravagance, listen either to the remonstrances or the persuasions of her husband, she yet yielded to the necessity of keeping up the appearance of happiness, since the quarrelsome were never deemed the respectable in society. Always cold, selfish, and hollow, yet her hypocrisy had its use, and was that which has been described as the "homage which vice pays to virtue." As, however, such conduct implies considerable labour, as she advanced in life she shrunk from the toil of seeming, and bore her contracted sphere of action the better, because the demand for virtues was proportionably decreased. Still, the desire to be known, the ambition to be distinguished, was pre-eminent—"the world prevailed and its dread laugh" at poverty and pretension, at inveigling mothers and portionless beauties, at family union and suspected tyranny—and, therefore, to a given point, and with the least possible portion of self-exertion and self-controul, she had "kept up appearances," allowing herself a certain portion of tyrannical government over her daughters, as a kind of safety-valve to her temper and habits. This was the more necessary, because it could not be practised on servants; at least, not upon the class of servants Lady Anne could afford to keep, which were of a very different description to her opposite neighbour's, being not of the Shakesperian genus, "who sweat for service, not for meed." As a certain great divine, in a moment of playfulness (cruelly