Receive her, therefore, with a cold, forbidding countenance.

She'll requite you, perhaps, by calling you boorish and underbred behind your back; but that is the kindest thing you can expect from her." Fanny gratefully pressed Lady Szentirmay's hand.

What blunders she must have made but for her! "And is there any one really worth mentioning among so many ?" she asked.
"Yes; Dame Marion." "Really!" "She is just as you saw her; she is always like that.

And it is no affectation, but her natural character." "Then what is her real character ?" "Well, she is--like the rest of them--a treacherous scandalmonger, with an ill word for every one, who takes a delight in picking out people's most secret faults; but you need not fear her, for she loves you sincerely, and will never betray, disparage, or injure you behind your back.

Have you not found that out already ?" Fanny, half-laughing half-weeping, hid her head in her friend's bosom, and embraced her tightly; and then they kissed each other, and laughed at the facility with which they also had fallen into the scandalizing ways of the world..