She had become an old maid from vanity, believing no offer she
received worthy of her deserts; and when her power of farther
conquest began to be doubted, she married from vanity, to repair the
character of her fading charms. In a word, her vanity was of that
magnitude, that she had no conjecture but that she was humble in her
own opinion; and it would have been impossible to have convinced her
that she thought well of herself, because she thought so WELL, as to
be assured that her own thoughts undervalued her.



CHAPTER VIII.



That, which in a weak woman is called vanity, in a man of sense is
termed pride. Make one a degree stranger, or the other a degree
weaker, and the dean and his wife were infected with the self-same
folly. Yet, let not the reader suppose that this failing (however
despicable) had erased from either bosom all traces of humanity.
They are human creatures who are meant to be portrayed in this
little book: and where is the human creature who has not some good
qualities to soften, if not to counterbalance, his bad ones?

The dean, with all his pride, could not wholly forget his brother,
nor eradicate from his remembrance the friend that he had been to
him: he resolved, therefore, in spite of his wife's advice, to make
him some overture, which he had no doubt Henry's good-nature would
instantly accept. The more he became acquainted with all the vain
and selfish propensities of Lady Clementina, the more he felt a