The two beautiful ladies held up their hands and laughed merrily.
[page [58].
But while the cynical ones were talking the brutal truth, there were blank looks on the faces of the many admirers of Miss Linley. She had had suitors by the score in Bath, and it was understood that when she sang for the first time at Oxford, she could have married the whole University. A wit with a capacity for mensuration had calculated that the amount of verses written to her upon this occasion would, if bound in volume form, and the volumes placed side by side, be sufficient to cover the quadrangle at Christ Church, and to leave as many over as would conceal the bareness of any lobby at Magdalen.
The consternation among the poets on hearing that Miss Linley had given her word to Mr. Long, was huge; and if all who threatened—through the medium of elegiacs—to fling themselves into some whirling stream (rhyming with their “vanish’d dream”) had carried out this determination, there would not have been enough poets left to carry on the business of Bath.
The young bloods, who had been ready at any moment to throw themselves, or their rivals, at her feet—whichever would please her best—were full of rage at the thought of having been slighted by the lady, and swore fearful oaths, and made strange vows that she should never be united to Mr. Long. The elderly sparks, most of whom had been deterred by certain considerations of rheumatism and stays, and other infirmities, from kneeling to her, now looked very glum. They were full of self-reproach now that they had found how easily she had been won; and some of them were incautious enough to confide their feelings to their friends, and these friends had no hesitation in ridiculing them to other friends; and as the consciousness of a lost opportunity usually makes a man rather touchy, there was a pretty fair share of recrimination in Bath circles during these days, and more than one duel was actually fought between friends of long standing; so that Miss Linley’s triumph was complete.
“What more has the girl to wish for?” cried Mrs. Crewe, when some one had remarked that Elizabeth was looking a trifle unhappy. “She is beautiful, she has the voice of an angel, she is likely to be a rich widow before she is twenty, and she has made the best of friends ready to cut each other’s throats! Pray, what more does she look for that she is still unhappy?”
“Is it not enough to make any young woman sad to think that she must relinquish a score of suitors, and only to obtain one husband in return?” said Mrs. Cholmondeley, who was of the party upon this occasion.
“It does truly seem a ridiculous sacrifice, with very little compensation,” said another lady critic.
“The rejected suitors may find some consolation for their sufferings in the reflection that Miss Linley is said to be looking unhappy,” said Mrs. Crewe.
“What! is’t possible that she looks unhappy, although she is not yet married, but only promised? I, for one, cannot believe it!” cried another of the party.