Yet the despair of the poor man induced her to promise she would write in his favour, though not act in it again unauthorised.

With feelings of still augmented discomfort, from her denial, she repaired to her toilette; but attired herself without seeing what she put on, or knowing, but by Mrs. Mittin's descriptions and boastings, that her dress was new, of the Pervil uniform, and made precisely like that of Mrs. Berlinton. Her agitated spirits, suspended, not between hope and fear, but hope and despair, permitted no examination of its elegance: the recollection of its expence, and the knowledge that Edgar thought her degenerating into coquetry, left nothing but regret for its wear.

Mrs. Berlinton, who never before, since her marriage, had been of any party where her attractions had not been unrivalled, had believed herself superior to pleasure from personal homage, and knew not, till she missed it, that it made any part of her amusement in public. But the Beauty, when first she perceives a competitor for the adulation she has enjoyed exclusively, and the Statesman, at the first turn of popular applause to an antagonist, are the two beings who, perhaps, for the moment, require the most severe display of self-command, to disguise, under the semblance of good humour or indifference, the disappointment they experience in themselves, or the contempt with which they are seized for the changing multitude.

Mrs. Berlinton, though she felt no resentment against Camilla for the desertion she had occasioned her, felt much surprize; not to be first was new to her: and whoever, in any station of life, any class of society, has had regular and acknowledged precedency, must own a sudden descent to be rather awkward. Where resignation is voluntary, to give up the higher place may denote more greatness of mind than to retain it; but where imposed by others, few things are less exhilarating to the principal, or impress less respect upon the by-stander.

Mrs. Berlinton had never been vain; but she could not be ignorant of her beauty; and that the world's admiration should be so wondrously fickle, or so curiously short-lived, as to make even the bloom of youth fade before the higher zest of novelty, was an earlier lesson than her mind was prepared to receive. She thought she had dressed herself that morning with too much carelessness of what was becoming, and devoted to this evening a greater portion of labour and study.

While Camilla was impatiently waiting, Mrs. Pollard, the washerwoman, gained admittance