This was the last thing Camilla meant to undertake: but she began, in a hesitating manner, to speak of her little debt. Mrs. Arlbery, eagerly interrupting her, insisted it should not be mentioned; adding: 'I go on vastly well again; I am breaking in two ponies, and building a new phaeton; and I shall soon pay for both, without the smallest inconvenience,—except just pinching my servants, and starving my visitors. But tell me something of your adventures. You are not half so communicative as Rumour, which has given me a thousand details of you, and married you and your whole set to at least half a dozen men a piece, since you were last at the Grove. Amongst others, it asserts, that my old Lord Valhurst was seriously at your feet? That prating Mrs. Mittin, who fastened upon my poor little niece at Tunbridge, and who is now her factotum, pretends that my lord's own servants spoke of it publicly at Mrs. Berlinton's.'

This was a fact that, being thus divulged, a very few questions made impossible to deny; though Camilla was highly superior to the indelicacy and ingratitude of repaying the preference of any gentleman by publishing his rejection.

'And what in the world, my dear child,' said Mrs. Arlbery, 'could provoke you to so wild an action as refusing him?'

'Good Heaven, Mrs. Arlbery!'

'O, what—you were not in love with him? I believe not!—but if he was in love with you, take my word for it, that would have done quite as well. 'Tis such a little while that same love lasts, even when it is begun with, that you have but a few months to lose, to be exactly upon a par with those who set out with all the quivers of Cupid, darting from heart to heart. He has still fortune enough left for a handsome settlement; you can't help outliving him, and then, think but how delectable would be your situation! Freedom, money at will, the choice of your own friends, and the enjoyment of your own humour!'

'You would but try me, my dear Mrs. Arlbery; for you cannot, I'm sure, believe me capable of making so solemn an engagement for such mercenary hopes, and selfish purposes.'

'This is all the romance of false reasoning. You have not sought the man, but the man you. You would not have solicited his acceptance, but yielded to his solicitation of yours. The balance is always just, where force is not used. The man has his reasons for chusing you; you have your reasons for suffering yourself to be chosen. What his are, you have no business to enquire; nor has he the smallest right to investigate yours.'

This was by no means the style in which Camilla had been brought up to think of marriage; and Mrs. Arlbery presently added: 'You are grave? yet I speak but as a being of the world I live in: though I address one that knows nothing about it. Tell me, however, a little more of your affairs. What are all these marriages and no marriages, our neighbourhood is so busy in making and unmaking?'

Camilla returned the most brief and quiet answers in her power; but was too late to save the delicacy of Eugenia in concealing her late double disappointments, the abortive preparations of Sir Hugh having travelled through all the adjoining country. 'Poor little dear ugly thing!' cried Mrs. Arlbery, 'she must certainly go off with her footman;—unless, indeed, that good old pedant, who teaches her that vast quantity of stuff she will have to unlearn, when once she goes a little about, will take compassion upon her and her thousands, and put them both into his own pockets.'

This raillery was painful nearly to disgust to Camilla; who frankly declared she saw her sister with no eyes but those of respect and affection, and could not endure to hear her mentioned in so ridiculous a manner.