"Well, to my notion, nobility and teaching little girls French and Italian, and their gammes, have very little in common. I had thought Mr. Shoreham an admirer of Miss Monson's."
{gammes = musical scales}
Now, unfortunately, my mistress overheard this remark. Her feelings were just in that agitated state to take the alarm, and she determined to flirt with a young man of the name of Thurston, with a view to awaken Betts's jealousy, if he had any, and to give vent to her own spleen. This Tom Thurston was one of those tall, good-looking young fellows who come from, nobody knows where, get into society, nobody knows how, and live on, nobody knows what. It was pretty generally understood that he was on the look-out for a rich wife, and encouragement from Julia Monson was not likely to be disregarded by such a person. To own the truth, my mistress carried matters much too far—so far, indeed, as to attract attention from every body but those most concerned; viz. her own mother and Betts Shoreham. Although elderly ladies play cards very little, just now, in American society, or, indeed, in any other, they have their inducements for rendering the well-known office of matron at a ball, a mere sinecure. Mrs. Monson, too, was an indulgent mother, and seldom saw any thing very wrong in her own children. Julia, in the main, had sufficient retenue, and a suspicion of her want of discretion on this point, was one of the last things that would cross the fond parent's mind at Mrs. Leamington's ball. Others, however, were less confiding.
{retenue = discretion}
"Your daughter is in HIGH SPIRITS to-night," observed a single lady of a certain age, who was sitting near Mrs. Monson; "I do not remember to have ever seen her so GAY."
"Yes, dear girl, she IS happy,"—poor Julia was any thing but THAT, just then—"but youth is the time for happiness, if it is ever to come in this life."
"Is Miss Monson addicted to such VERY high spirits?" continued one, who was resolute to torment, and vexed that the mother could not be sufficiently alarmed to look around.
"Always—when in agreeable company. I think it a great happiness, ma'am, to possess good spirits."
"No doubt—yet one needn't be always fifteen, as Lady Wortley Montague said," muttered the other, giving up the point, and changing her seat, in order that she might speak her mind more freely into the ear of a congenial spirit.
{Lady Wortley Montague = Lady Mary Wortley Montague (1689-1762), English essayist and letter-writer}