Page:Lady Anne Granard 3.pdf/180

178 makes another; in that respect Lady Allerton was useless to her sisters." To hear Lady Anne run over her catalogue of pressing affairs demanding her life, and to look at her, and feel how closely those words applied to her case—"Thou fool! this night shall thy soul be required of thee!" rendered her visit, as usual, a very painful task to the kind-hearted and well-judging neighbour. As this, however, was the first time she had ever permitted the possibility of her dying to escape her, Mrs. Palmer hoped it was the beginning of better things, and that, perhaps, in the midst of so many engagements for this world, she would remember she was booked for another. A huge caravan of caps from Miss Griffiths, and an assortment of satins from Howell and James's, ushered into the dressing-room by Fanchette, silenced all observation, save on the subjects before them. Mrs. Palmer indulged a latent hope that Georgiana, who really wanted dress to a painful degree, was the person to be provided for; but that hope quickly vanished, like the one which preceded it, as Lady Anne said— "There cannot be a more foolish idea, my dear friend, than that of thinking any kind of dress may do for an invalid; on the contrary, there never was a time when it is so necessary to have one's coiffure bien arrangée, one's general drapery