She had encouraged and fostered the follies of her sister, though she was always willing, and often able, to protect her from their probable result.

She had done her best, and had thoroughly succeeded in spoiling her brother, and turning him loose upon the world an idle man without a profession and without a shilling that he could call his own.
Miss Stanhope was a clever woman, able to talk on most subjects, and quite indifferent as to what the subject was.

She prided herself on her freedom from English prejudice, and, she might have added, from feminine delicacy.

On religion she was a pure free-thinker, and with much want of true affection, delighted to throw out her own views before the troubled mind of her father.

To have shaken what remained of his Church of England faith would have gratified her much, but the idea of his abandoning his preferment in the church had never once presented itself to her mind.