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Mrs. Harcourt, with Isabella and Matilda, paid Mrs. Fanshaw a visit, as soon as they heard that her daughter was come home.

Miss Fanshaw, an erect stiffened figure, made her entree; and it was impossible not to perceive that her whole soul was intent upon her manner of holding her head and placing her elbows, as she came into the room. Her person had undergone all the ordinary and extraordinary tortures of back-boards, collars, stocks, dumbbells, etc. She looked at Isabella and Matilda with some surprise and contempt during the first ten minutes after her entrance; for they were neither of them seated in the exact posture which she had been instructed to think the only position in which a young lady should sit in company. Isabella got up to look at a drawing; Miss Fanshaw watched every step she took, and settled it in her own mind that Miss Harcourt did not walk as if she had ever been at Suxberry House. Matilda endeavoured to engage the figure that sat beside her in conversation; but the figure had no conversation, and the utmost that Matilda could obtain was a few monosyllables pronounced with affected gravity; for at Suxberry House this young lady had been taught to maintain an invincible silence when produced to strangers; but she made herself amends for this constraint, the moment she was with her companions, by a tittering, gossiping species of communication, which scarcely deserves the name of conversation.

Whilst the silent Miss Fanshaw sat so as to do her dancing-master strict justice, Mrs. Fanshaw was stating to Mrs. Harcourt the enormous expense to which she had gone in her daughter’s education. Though firm to her original doctrine, that women had no occasion for learning–in which word of reproach she included all literature–she nevertheless had been convinced, by the unanimous voice of fashion, that accomplishments were most desirable for young ladies –desirable, merely because they were fashionable; she did not, in the least, consider them as sources of independent occupation.

Isabella was struck with sudden admiration at the sight of a head of Jupiter which Miss Fanshaw had just finished, and Mrs. Harcourt borrowed it for her to copy; though Miss Fanshaw was secretly but decidedly of opinion, that no one who had not learned from the drawing-master at Suxberry House could copy this head of Jupiter with any chance of success.

There was a pretty little netting-box upon the table which caught Matilda’s eye, and she asked the silent figure what it was made of. The silent figure turned its head mechanically, but could give no information upon the subject. Mrs. Fanshaw, however, said that she had bought the box at the Repository for ingenious works, and that the reason she chose it was because Lady N—- had recommended it to her.

“It is some kind of new manufacture, her ladyship tells me, invented by some poor little boy that she patronizes; her ladyship can tell you more of the matter, Miss Matilda, than I can,” concluded Mrs. Fanshaw; and, producing her netting, she asked Mrs. Harcourt, “if she had not been vastly notable to have got forward so fast with her work.”

The remainder of the visit was spent in recounting her losses at the card-table, and in exhortation to Mrs. Harcourt to send Miss Isabella and Matilda to finish their education at Suxberry House.

Mrs. Harcourt was somewhat alarmed by the idea that her daughters would not be equal to Miss Fanshaw in accomplishments but, fortunately for Mad. de Rosier and herself, she was soon induced to change her opinion by farther opportunities of comparison.

In a few days her visit was returned. Mrs. Harcourt happened to mention the globe that Isabella was painting: Miss Fanshaw begged to see it, and she went into Mrs. Harcourt’s dressing-room, where it hung. The moment she found herself with Isabella and Matilda, out of company, the silent figure became talkative. The charm seemed to be broken, or rather reversed, and she began to chatter with pert incessant rapidity.