Eugenia now grew uneasy. 'Let us be quick,' she whispered 'and enter the house!'

'Divinities! Lord! are they divinities?' said a girlish female voice; 'pray how old are they?'

'I fancy about seventeen.'

'Seventeen! gracious! I thought they'd been quite young; I wonder they a'n't married!'

'I presume, then, you intend to be more expeditious?' said another, whose voice spoke him to be General Kinsale.

'Gracious! I hope so, for I hate an old bride. I'll never marry at all, if I stay till I am eighteen.'

'A story goes about,' said the General, 'that Sir Hugh Tyrold has selected one of his nieces for his sole heiress; but no two people agree which it is; they have asserted it of each.'

'I was mightily taken with one of the girls,' said Mrs. Arlbery; 'there was something so pleasant in her looks and manner, that I even felt inclined to forgive her being younger and prettier than myself; but she turned out also to be more whimsical—and that there was no enduring.'

Camilla, extremely ashamed, was now upon the point of begging Eugenia to return, when a new speech seized all her attention.

'Do you know, General, when that beautiful automaton, Miss Lynmere, is to marry young Mandlebert?'