 Stafford, were now dedicated to people whose conversation made her
no amends; and if she retired to her own room, it failed not to excite
sneers and suspicions. She saw Mrs. Stafford struggling with dejection
which she had no power to dissipate or relieve, and obliged to enter
into frequent parties of what is called pleasure, tho' to her it gave
only fatigue and disgust, to gratify Mrs. Ashwood, who hated all society
but a crowd. James Crofts, indeed, helped to keep her in good humour by
his excessive adulation; and chiefly by assuring her, that by any man of
the least taste, the baby face of Emmeline could be considered only as a
foil to her more mature charms, and that her fine dark eyes eclipsed all
the eyes in the world. He protested too against Emmeline for affecting
knowledge--'It is,' said he, 'a maxim of my father's--and my father is
no bad judge--that for a woman to affect literature is the most horrid
of all absurdities; and for a woman to know any thing of business, is
detestable!'

Mrs. Ashwood laid by her dictionary, determined for the future to spell
her own way without it.

Besides the powerful intervention of flattery, James Crofts had another
not less successful method of winning the lady's favour. He told her
that his brother, who had long cherished a passion in which he was at
length likely to be disappointed, was in that case determined never to
marry; that he was in an ill state of health; and if he died without
posterity, the estate and title of his father would descend to himself.

The elder Crofts, very desirous of seeing a brother established who
might otherwise be burthensome or inconvenient to him, suggested this
finesse; and secured it's belief by writing frequent and melancholy
accounts of his own ill health--an artifice by which he promoted at once
his brother's views and his own. He affected the valetudinarian so
happily, and complained so much of the ill effect that constant
application to business had on his constitution, that nobody doubted of
the reality of his sickness. He took care that Miss Delamere should
receive an account of it, which he knew she would consider as the
consequence of his despairing love; and when he had interested her
vanity and of course her compassion, he contrived to obtain leave of
absence for three months from the duties of his office, in order to go
abroad for the recovery of his health. He hastened to Barege; and soon
found means to re
