"Indeed, sir, I am not aware of any particular difficulty. You know my daughter Paragon has long been respectably married to a gentleman of family; and, as for my daughter Sophia, I shall, please God I live, witness her wedding to-morrow morning before my dinner."
"Who is she to marry, pray?" asked G—— with eager curiosity; and which, my father answered, by putting Lord Berwick's letter into his hands, to his utmost astonishment; and, before he had at all recovered from his fit of envy and surprise, my father took his leave, saying that he had many preparations to make for the approaching marriage.
Next morning, as my father was stepping into the carriage which was to convey him to Lord Berwick's house in Grosvenor Square, well-dressed and in high spirits, he was gratified by the sight of his neighbour, who happened to pass his door at that very moment.
This man, naturally envious, and having hitherto looked down with pity on my father's misfortunes in having such handsome daughters, or, at least, he affected to do so, although, in his heart perhaps he had not despised his children the more, supposing it had been the will of heaven to have bestowed on them countenances less forbiddingly ugly, this man, I say, could not, under the pressure of existing circumstances, help giving some vent to his spleen, exclaimed, "Don't hurry! don't break your neck!" and then passed on, ashamed as well he might be at the littleness of his envy.
Just before Sophia's marriage, Lord Berwick spoke to her, to this effect:
"My beloved Sophia, you are about to become an innocent, virtuous woman, and therefore you must pass your word to cut your sisters dead for ever and at once. I allude particularly to Fanny and Harriette."
"Yes—certainly—very well;" was Sophia's warm-hearted answer.
"And you will oblige me by neither writing to them nor receiving any letters from them."
"Very well; then I will give them up altogether," said Sophia, with much placidity; and yet we had never been, in the slightest degree, deficient in sisterly affection towards her; and Lord Berwick expected to inspire with affection this heartless thing, who, for a mere title, conferred on her by a stranger she disliked, could at once forget the ties of nature, and forsake for ever without an effort or a tear her earliest friends and nearest relations; and not because she was more virtuous than they were, since, on the contrary, she had begun her career before other girls even dream of such things. She had intruded herself on a cobbler at thirteen, thrown herself into the arms of the most disgusting profligate in England at fourteen, with her eyes open, knowing what he was; then offered herself for sale at a price to Colonel Berkeley, and, when her terms were refused with scorn and contempt by the handsome and young, she throws herself into the arms of age and ugliness for a yearly stipend, and at length, by good luck, without one atom of virtue, became a wife.