The bishop's people and the dean's people did not quite trust her. The
Camperdowns and Garnetts utterly distrusted her. The Mopuses and Benjamins
were more familiar than they would be with a really great lady. She was
sharp enough to understand all this. Should it be Lord Fawn or should it
be a Corsair? The worst of Lord Fawn was the undoubted fact that he was
not himself a great man. He could, no doubt, make his wife a peeress; but
he was poor, encumbered with a host of sisters, dull as a blue-book, and
possessed of little beyond his peerage to recommend him. If she could only
find a peer, unmarried, with a dash of the Corsair about him! In the
meantime what was she to do about the jewels?
There was staying with her at this time a certain Miss Macnulty, who was
related, after some distant fashion, to old Lady Linlithgow, and who was
as utterly destitute of possessions or means of existence as any
unfortunate, well-born, and moderately-educated middle-aged woman in
London. To live upon her friends, such as they might be, was the only mode
of life within her reach. It was not that she had chosen such dependence;
nor, indeed, had she endeavoured to reject it.
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