I was too much shocked and disappointed to speak; but Sir Charles soon broke silence; and after the most tedious sentence of compliment that I had ever heard, he thus continued:

'Your ladyship may recollect I have always been celebrated for giving advice. Let me then advise you to relieve yourself from your present embarrassment, by marrying Lord Montmorenci. It seems you do not love him. For that very reason marry him. Trust me, love before marriage is the surest preventive of love after it. Heroes and heroines exemplify the proposition. Why do their biographers always conclude the book just at their wedding? Simply because all beyond it is unhappiness and hatred.'

'Surely, Sir Charles,' said I, 'you must be mistaken. Their biographers (who have such admirable information, that they can even tell the thoughts and actions of dying personages, when not a soul is near them), these always end the book with declaring that the connubial lives of their heroes and heroines are like unclouded skies, or unruffled streams, or summer all the year through, or some gentle simile or other.'

'That is all irony,' replied Sir Charles. 'But I know most of these heroes and heroines myself; and I know that nothing can equal their misery.'

'Do you know Lord Orville and his Evelina?' said I; 'and are not they happy?'

'Happy!' cried he, laughing. 'Have you really never heard of their notorious miffs? Why it was but yesterday that she flogged him with a boiled leg of mutton, because he had sent home no turnips.'

'Astonishment!' exclaimed I. 'And she, when a girl, so meek.'

'Ay, there it is,' said he. 'One has never seen a white foal or a cross girl; but often white horses and cross wives. Let me advise you against white horses.'

'But pray,' said I, addressing Amanda, 'is not your brother Oscar happy with his Adela?'

'Alas, no,' cried she. 'Oscar became infatuated with the charms of Evelina's old governess, Madam Duval; so poor Adela absconded; and she, who was once the soul of mirth, has now grown a confirmed methodist; curls a sacred sneer at gaiety, loves canting and decanting, piety and eau de vie. In short, the devil is very busy about her, though she sometimes drives him away with a thump of the Bible.'