attendance upon Mrs Charlton at an end, she had no longer any excuse
for having a debt in the world, and would suffer no persuasion to make
her begin her career in life, with a negligence in settling her
accounts which she had so often censured in others. To go to London
therefore she was fixed, and all that she desired was his advice
concerning the journey.

He then told her that in order to settle with her guardians, she must
write to them in form, to demand an account of the sums that had been
expended during her minority, and announce her intention for the future
to take the management of her fortune into her own hands.

She immediately followed his directions, and consented to remain at the
Grove till their answers arrived.

Being now, therefore, unavoidably fixed for some time at the house, she
thought it proper and decent to attempt softening Lady Margaret in her
favour. She exerted all her powers to please and to oblige her; but the
exertion was necessarily vain, not only from the disposition, but the
situation of her ladyship, since every effort made for this
conciliatory purpose, rendered her doubly amiable in the eyes of her
husband, and consequently to herself more odious than ever. Her
jealousy, already but too well founded, received every hour the
poisonous nourishment of fresh conviction, which so much soured and
exasperated a temper naturally harsh, that her malignity and ill-
humour grew daily more acrimonious. Nor would she have contented
herself with displaying this irascibility by general moroseness, had
not the same suspicious watchfulness which discovered to her the
passion of her husband, served equally to make manifest the
indifference and innocence of Cecilia; to reproach her therefore, she