If rank had no charm for him, which apparently it had not, she would try beauty.

When beauty failed, even beauty with money in its hand, Lady Mary hesitated, and then fell back on goodness.

But either the goodness was not good enough, or, as Lady Mary feared, it was not sufficiently High Church to be really genuine: even goodness failed.

For three years she had strained every nerve, and at the end of them she was no nearer the object in view than when she began.
An inconvenient death of a sister, with whom she had long since quarrelled about church matters (and who had now gone where her folly in differing from Lady Mary would be fully, if painfully, brought home to her), had prevented Lady Mary continuing her designs this year in London.

But if thwarted in one direction, she knew how to throw her energies into another.