Certainly her resolve to send the younger Arabella to make her debut into society under the aegis of Lady Bridlington was of no very recent date. She had maintained throughout the years an infrequent but regular correspondence with her old friend, and was tolerably certain that fashionable life had in no way impaired the easy good-nature which had characterized the plump and cheerful Miss Haverhill. Lady Bridlington was not herself blessed with daughters—she was, in fact, the mother of only one child, a son, some seven or eight years older than Mrs. Tallant’s daughter—but from her friend’s point of view this was a decided advantage. The mother of a family of hopeful girls, however goodnatured, would not be in the least likely to take under her wing yet another young female in search of an eligible husband. But a widow in comfortable circumstances, with a strong inclination for all the amusements of fashion, and no daughters to launch upon the world, might reasonably be supposed to welcome the opportunity of chaperoning a young protégée to the balls, routs, and Assemblies she herself delighted in. Mrs. Tallant could not conceive it to be otherwise. Nor was she disappointed. Lady Bridlington, crossing several sheets of gilt-edged notepaper with her sprawling pen, could not imagine why she should not have hit upon the notion herself. She was excessively dull, and liked nothing in the world so much as having young persons about her. It had long been a grief to her, she wrote, that she had no daughter of her own; and as she had no doubt that she would love her dearest Sophia’s girl on sight she should await her arrival in the greatest impatience. Mrs. Tallant had had no need to mention her object in sending Arabella to town: Henry Tallant might consider that Lady Bridlington’s letters betrayed little but folly and frivolity, but her ladyship, however lacking in mental profundity, had plenty of worldly sense. Sophia might rest assured, she wrote, that she would leave no stone unturned to provide Arabella with a suitable husband. Already, she hinted, she had several eligible bachelors in her eye.