As the sea air was especially recommended to Venetia, and as Lady
Annabel shrank with a morbid apprehension from society, to which
nothing could persuade her she was not an object either of odium or
impertinent curiosity, she finally resolved to visit Weymouth, then a
small and secluded watering-place, and whither she arrived and settled
herself, it not being even the season when its few customary visitors
were in the habit of gathering.
This residence at Weymouth quite repaid Lady Annabel for all the
trouble of her new settlement, and for the change in her life very
painful to her confirmed habits, which she experienced in leaving for
the first time for such a long series of years, her old hall; for the
rose returned to the cheek of her daughter, and the western breezes,
joined with the influence of the new objects that surrounded her, and
especially of that ocean, and its strange and inexhaustible variety,
on which she gazed for the first time, gradually, but surely,
completed the restoration of Venetia to health, and with it to much of
her old vivacity.
When Lady Annabel had resided about a year at Weymouth, in the society
of which she had invariably made the indisposition of Venetia a reason
for not entering, a great revolution suddenly occurred at this little
quiet watering-place, for it was fixed upon as the summer residence of
the English court.
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