"
"Oh, Elvira, you could not have thought anything so wicked," cried
Babie.
"They all went on so, and made so sure," said Elvira, hanging her
head, "and I never did know the real way the will was found till
Janet told me. Babie, if you had heard Lady Clanmacnalty clear her
throat when people talked about the will being found, you would have
believed she knew better than anyone."
So it was. The girl, weak in character, and far from sensible, full
of self-importance, and puffed up with her inheritance, had been
easily blinded and involved in the web that the artful Lisette had
managed to draw round her. She had been totally alienated from her
old friends, and by force of reiteration had been brought to think
them guilty of defrauding her. In truth, she was kept in a whirl of
gaiety and amusement, with little power of realizing her situation,
till the breach had grown too wide for the feeble will of a helpless
being like her to cross it. Though she had flirted extensively, she
had never felt capable of accepting any one of her suitors, and in
these refusals she had been assisted by Lisette, who wanted to secure
her for her brother, but thanks to warnings from Mr. Wakefield, and
her husband's sense of duty, durst not do so before she was of age.
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