Page:Romance & Reality 3.pdf/165

Rh estimate was at once true and false—true, as regarded the really pretty face she did possess; false, as regarded the effect to be produced by the said face. She was not so much vain, as convinced of her own importance, from having been all her life the principal object in her own circle; finding herself suddenly of little consequence, she shrank back into all her natural timidity, and left London with a great stock of mortification, a little sentiment, and having acquired more knowledge than wisdom." "Wisdom," observed Lord Mandeville, "Is only knowledge well applied." "My pretty protégée was very little likely to turn hers to much account. Remember how we found her—living in the most entire seclusion, cherishing grief like a duty, nursing all sorts of fancies 'vain and void,' neglecting herself, indulging in the most morbid sensibility, and having every probability of wasting the best days of her life in sickly seclusion, and either dying of a consumption, or, when she came to the romantic age in woman—I mean between forty and fifty—marrying some fortune-hunter who could talk sentiment, or resembled her first love. Nous avons changé tout cela. A beauty and an heiress—coming out under my