This habit of thinking, this kind of absorption, gave strength to the
passions.
We will now enter on the more active field of life.
CHAP. V.
A few months after Mary was turned of seventeen, her brother was
attacked by a violent fever, and died before his father could reach the
school.
She was now an heiress, and her mother began to think her of
consequence, and did not call her _the child_. Proper masters were sent
for; she was taught to dance, and an extraordinary master procured to
perfect her in that most necessary of all accomplishments.
A part of the estate she was to inherit had been litigated, and the heir
of the person who still carried on a Chancery suit, was only two years
younger than our heroine. The fathers, spite of the dispute, frequently
met, and, in order to settle it amicably, they one day, over a bottle,
determined to quash it by a marriage, and, by uniting the two estates,
to preclude all farther enquiries into the merits of their different
claims.
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