The venerable sisters received the intelligence with much surprise:  they did not know very well what to say about it; there was much to be said both for and against it.  Lady Maclaughlan had a high opinion of English air; but then they had heard the morals of the people were not so good, and there were a great many dissipated young men in England; though, to be sure, there was no denying but the mineral waters were excellent; and, in short, it ended in Miss Grizzy’s sitting down to concoct an epistle to Lady Maclaughlan; in Miss Jacky’s beginning to draw up a code of instructions for a young woman upon her entrance into life; and Miss Nicky hoping that if Mary did go, she would take care not to bring back any extravagant English notions with her.  The younger set debated amongst themselves how many of them would be invited to accompany Mary to England, and from thence fell to disputing the possession of a brown hair trunk, with a flourished D in brass letters on the top.

Mrs. Douglas, with repressed feelings, set about offering the sacrifice she had planned, and in a letter to Lady Juliana, descriptive of her daughter’s situation, she sought to excite her tenderness without creating an alarm.  How far she succeeded will be seen hereafter.  In the meantime we must take a retrospective glance at the last seventeen years of her Ladyship’s life.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

Her “only labour was to kill the time;
And labour dire it is, and weary woe.”

         Castle of Indolence.

YEARS had rolled on amidst heartless pleasures and joyless amusements, but Lady Juliana was made neither the wiser nor the better by added years and increased experience.  Time had in vain turned his glass before eyes still dazzled with the gaudy allurements of the world, for she took “no note of time” but as the thing that was to take her to the Opera and the Park, and that sometimes hurried her excessively, and sometimes bored her to death.  At length she was compelled to abandon her chase after happiness in the only sphere where she believed it was to be found.  Lord Courtland’s declining health unfitted him for the dissipation of a London life; and, by the advice of his physician, he resolved upon retiring to a country seat which he possessed in the vicinity of Bath.  Lady Juliana was in despair at the thoughts of this sudden wrench from what she termed “life;” but she had no resource; for though her good-natured husband gave her the whole of General Cameron’s allowance, that scarcely served to keep her in clothes; and though her brother was perfectly willing that she and her children should occupy apartments in his house, yet he would have been equally acquiescent had she proposed to remove from it.  Lady Juliana had a sort of instinctive knowledge of this, which prevented her from breaking out into open remonstrance.  She therefore contented herself with being more than usually peevish and irascible