"Comfort! I hate comfort!" said Agnes, indignantly, "a stupid, detestable word, as opposite to real happiness as night is to day! I shall be satisfied with nothing short of felicity."
"But felicity can last only a day, while peace and comfort may be enjoyed for life," replied Clara. "In talking of marriage, you seem to think of nothing beyond the honey-moon, and to forget the hours, days, and years of actual life that must follow!"
"It is absolute nonsense looking so far out to sea as you do, Clara," said Agnes, impatiently. "How I shall enjoy, next winter, perhaps, chaperoning you both to parties if I can find any fascinating victim, tall, thin, and handsome enough to please me."
"But surely you would not, for any consideration, marry yet!" exclaimed Caroline. "Lady Towercliffe says that the holiday of a girl's life is from the time she leaves school till the day she marries, and you should enjoy ten years at least, Agnes, before you are tempted to begin the cares of life."
"Cares!" exclaimed Agnes, with a contemptuous laugh, "I do not mean ever to take any cares upon myself! but, as Captain De Crespigny very sensibly observed yesterday, the husband worthy of me should be made on purpose. In the first place, he must be rich, for I have a scruple of conscience in ever witnessing a poor marriage, where, after the wedding-cake has been eaten, there is nothing else left. In everything,—even in the mere choice of a ribbon,—I am fastidious, and would rather not have a thing at all, than dispense with getting precisely what I like. My intended, then, must have been educated at Eton, for I do think the ugliest bit of human nature on earth is a Scotch school-boy of about fourteen. He must have such a foot! so small! oh! no foot at all. He must employ Buckmaster the tailor, get his shoes from Paris, and never wear the same gloves twice. He must——"
"My dear Agnes! this should be all put into the contract!" said Clara, laughing. "It perfectly ruins me to hear you talk so extravagantly; and, besides, pray be warned in time of your own probable fate, that the beauty of a family, or the beauty of a winter, is said always to make a poor marriage. I never could understand the reason of that; but Lady Towercliffe says, men are perverse beings, who like to criticise and undervalue a professed beauty, while, in the mean time, they are taken by surprise, and fall in love unexpectedly with some obscure girl, whose charms they discover, or fancy for themselves, and whom, probably, not another man living ever thought tolerable."
"For my part," said Caroline, "I shall wait till a person can be found as handsome as Sir Patrick, as agreeable as you tell me Captain De Crespigny is, as clever as Mr. Granville, as merry as young De Lancey——"
"And as rich as Lord Doncaster!" interrupted Agnes.
"No! no!—, a hundred times no!" replied Caroline, coloring, speaking in a singular tone of asperity, "I hate and abhor money as a consideration in marrying! I wish money had never been invented! It becomes a misery for those who have too much, as well as for those who have too little."
"Well! give me money," said Agnes, laughing. "And let me tell you, Caroline, that even if you have eight or ten thousand pounds, which is probably the utmost, you will find it no great inconvenience during the long run of life. Money has its merits, and I should be afraid to marry any man, even the most romantic of my lovers, if it involved the necessity for his sacrificing one of his usual comforts;—if it obliged him to drink his bottle of sherry instead of claret every day, I am not quite sure that he would never begin to grumble! They tell me it should be considered a man does not wish himself twice every day unmarried again. No, no money, is no bad thing, and if you have any to spare, pray let me have the surplus."