ABSTRACT
In the mean time, lady Clonbrony had been occupied with thoughts very different from those which passed in the mind of her son. Though she had never completely recovered from her rheumatic pains, she had become inordinately impatient of confinement to her own house, and weary of those dull evenings at home, which had, in her son’s absence, become insupportable. She told over her visiting tickets regularly twice a day, and gave to every card of invitation a heartfelt sigh. Miss Pratt alarmed her ladyship, by bringing intelligence of some parties given by persons of consequence, to which she was not invited. She feared that she should be forgotten in the world, well knowing how soon the world forgets those they do not see every day and every where. How miserable is the fine lady’s lot, who cannot forget, and who is forgot by the world in a moment! How much more miserable still is the condition of a would-be-fine lady, working her way up in the world with care and pains! By her, every the slightest failure of attention, / from persons of rank and fashion, is marked and felt with a jealous anxiety, and with a sense of mortification the most acute — an invitation omitted is a matter of the most serious consequence, not only as it regards the present but the future; for if she be not invited by lady A, it will lower her in the eyes of lady B, and of all the ladies in the alphabet. It will form a precedent of the most dangerous and inevitable application. If she has nine invitations, and the tenth be wanting, the nine have no power to make her happy. This was precisely lady Clonbrony’s case — there was to be a party at lady St James’s, for which lady Clonbrony had no card.
