I vow, cousin, said Miss Glanville, you are infinitely more severe in your censures than Mr. Tinsel was at the assembly. You had little reason, methinks, to be angry with him.
All I have said, replied Arabella, was the natural inference from your own account of the manner in which people live here. When actions are a censure upon themselves, the reciter will always be considered as a satirist.
[Chapter X.]
In which our heroine justifies her own notions by some very illustrious examples.
Mr. Selvin and Mr. Tinsel, who had listened attentively to this discourse of Arabella, took leave as soon as it was ended, and went away with very different opinions of her;—
Mr. Tinsel declaring she was a fool, and had no knowledge of the world; and Mr. Selvin convinced she was a wit, and very learned in antiquity.
Certainly, said Mr. Selvin, in support of his opinion, the lady has great judgment; has been capable of prodigious application, as is apparent by her extensive reading: then her memory is quite miraculous. I protest, I am quite charmed with her; I never met with such a woman in my life.
Her cousin, in my opinion, replied Mr. Tinsel, is infinitely beyond her in every merit, but beauty. How sprightly and free her conversation! What a thorough knowledge of the world! So true a taste for polite amusements, and a fund of spirits that sets vapours and spleen at defiance!