"The Semi-attached Couple/House"

[fiefoe]

I can't quite decide which one of these Emily Eden novels I want to read first.

• They let me in, which was too unkind. I saw the whole family,
• She was in imminent peril of being forced to praise, but escaped with great adroitness.
• The prolonged absence of a friend was almost a pleasure to her, as it gave her the opportunity of saying after a first meeting, "How changed Mrs. So-and-so is!"
• People may go on talking for ever of the jealousies of pretty women; but for real genuine, hard-working envy there is nothing like an ugly woman with a taste for admiration.
• Misses Douglas... had not even a disappointment to boast of, not a report about them to contradict, and Mrs. Douglas's chance of being a grandmother at all seemed hardly worth having.
• the good looks of the poorest of younger brothers
• Lord Teviot was exactly what they expected, so very distinguished and so good-looking. Some thought him too attentive to his prayers for a man in love, and some thought him too attentive to Lady Helen for a man in church; but eventually the two factions joined, and thought him simply very attentive.

• She did not care for Blanche's little vivacities.
• " I often think, my dear, that it is a great pity you are so imaginative, and a still greater pity that you are so fastidious. You would be happier if you were as dull and as matter of-fact as I am."  <>  " Dear Aunt Sarah, don't say you are dull. There is nobody I like so much to talk to. You bring out such original remarks, such convincing truths, and in a quiet way, so that they do not make the black bruises which generally produce. "