 cannot, I'm sure, believe me capable of making so solemn an engagement for such mercenary hopes, and selfish purposes.'

'This is all the romance of false reasoning. You have not sought the man, but the man you. You would not have solicited his acceptance, but yielded to his solicitation of yours. The balance is always just, where force is not used. The man has his reasons for chusing you; you have your reasons for suffering yourself to be chosen. What his are, you have no business to enquire; nor has he the smallest right to investigate yours.'

This was by no means the style in which Camilla had been brought up to think of marriage; and Mrs. Arlbery presently added: 'You are grave? yet I speak but as a being of the world I live in: though I address one that knows nothing about it. Tell me, however, a little more of your affairs. What are all these marriages and no marriages, our neighbourhood is so busy in making and unmaking?'

Camilla returned the most brief and quiet answers in her power; but was too late to save the delicacy of Eugenia in concealing her late double disappointments, the abortive preparations of Sir Hugh having travelled through all the adjoining country. 'Poor little dear ugly thing!' cried Mrs. Arlbery, 'she must certainly go off with her footman;—unless, indeed, that good old pedant, who teaches her that vast quantity of stuff she will have to unlearn, when once she goes a little about, will take compassion upon her and her thousands, and put them both into his own pockets.'

This raillery was painful nearly to disgust to Camilla; who frankly declared she saw her sister with no eyes but those of respect and affection, and could not endure to hear her mentioned in so ridiculous a manner.

'Never judge the heart of a wit,' answered she, laughing, 'by the tongue! We have often as good hearts, ay, and as much good nature, too, as the careful prosers who utter nothing but what is right, or the heavy thinkers who have too little fancy to say anything that is wrong. But we have a pleasure in our own rattle that cruelly runs away with our discretion.'

She then more seriously apologized for what she had said, and declared herself an unaffected admirer of all she had heard of the good qualities of Eugenia.

Other subjects were then taken up, till they were interrupted by a visit from the young bride, Mrs. Lissin.

Jumping into the
