unbounded extravagance as the harbinger of injustice. Long
accustomed to see Mrs Harrel in the same retirement in which she had
hitherto lived herself, when books were their first amusement, and
the society of each other was their chief happiness, the change she
now perceived in her mind and manners equally concerned and
surprised her. She found her insensible to friendship, indifferent
to her husband, and negligent of all social felicity. Dress,
company, parties of pleasure, and public places, seemed not merely
to occupy all her time; but to gratify all her wishes. Cecilia, in
whose heart glowed the warmest affections and most generous virtue,
was cruelly depressed and mortified by this disappointment; yet she
had the good sense to determine against upbraiding her, well aware
that if reproach has any power over indifference, it is only that of
changing it into aversion.

Mrs Harrel, in truth, was innocent of heart, though dissipated in
life; married very young, she had made an immediate transition from
living in a private family and a country town, to becoming mistress
of one of the most elegant houses in Portman-square, at the head of
a splendid fortune, and wife to a man whose own pursuits soon showed
her the little value he himself set upon domestic happiness.
Immersed in the fashionable round of company and diversions, her
understanding, naturally weak, was easily dazzled by the brilliancy
of her situation; greedily, therefore, sucking in air impregnated
with luxury and extravagance, she had soon no pleasure but to vie
with some rival in elegance, and no ambition but to exceed some
superior in expence.

The Dean of----in naming Mr Harrel for one of the guardians of his
niece, had no other view than that of indulging her wishes by