made a catch-match.—There's the eldest of the set, Mrs. Tollemache, what had she, in the devil's name, to set up with in the world but a pair of good eyes?—her aunt, to be sure, taught her the use of them early enough: they might have rolled to all eternity before they would have rolled me out of my senses; but you see they did Tollemache's business. However, they are going to part now, I hear: Tollemache was tired of her before the honey-moon was over, as I foretold. Then there's the musical girl. Joddrell, who has no more ear than a post, went and married her, because he had a mind to set up for a connoisseur in music; and Mrs. Stanhope flattered him that he was one."
The gentlemen joined in the general laugh: the tragic muse sighed.
"Even were she at the School for Scandal, the tragic muse dare not laugh, except behind her mask," said Clarence Hervey.
"Far be it from her to laugh at those follies which she must for ever deplore!" said Belinda, in a feigned voice.—"What miseries spring from these ill-suited marriages! The victims are sacrificed before they have sense enough to avoid their fate."
Clarence Hervey imagined that this speech alluded to Lady Delacour's own marriage.
"Damn me if I know any woman, young or old, that would avoid being married, if she could, though," cried Sir Philip Baddely, a gentleman who always supplied "each vacuity of sense" with an oath: "but, Rochfort, didn't Valleton marry one of these nieces?"
"Yes: she was a mighty fine dancer, and had good legs enough: Mrs. Stanhope got poor Valleton to fight a duel about her place in a country dance, and then he was so pleased with himself for his prowess, that he married the girl."
Belinda made an effort to change her seat, but she was encompassed so that she could not retreat.
"As to Jenny Mason, the fifth of the nieces," continued the witty gentleman, "she was as brown as mahogany, and had neither eyes, nose, mouth, nor legs: what Mrs. Stanhope could do with her I often wondered; but she took courage, rouged her up, set her a going as a dasher, and she dashed herself into Tom Levit's curricle, and Tom couldn't get her out again till she