Returning from a party this evening—a party where they met Lord William, who had sat beside Caroline at supper—Lady Jane began to reproach her with having been unusually reserved and silent.
Caroline said she was not conscious of this.
“I hope and trust I am not too broad,” continued Lady Jane, with a very proud and proper look; “but I own, I think there is as much indelicacy in a young lady’s hanging back too much as in her coming too forward. And gentlemen are apt to over-rate their consequence as much, if they find you are afraid to speak to them, as if you were to talk—like Miss Falconer herself.”
Caroline assented fully to the truth of this remark; assured Lady Jane that she had not intentionally hung back or been reserved; that she had no affectation of this sort. In a word, she promised to exert herself more in conversation, since Lady Jane desired it.
“I do wish it, my dear: you don’t get on—there’s no getting you on. You certainly do not talk enough to gentlemen when they sit beside you. It will be observed.”
“Then, ma’am, I hope it will be observed too,” said Caroline, smiling, “that the gentlemen do not talk to me.”
“No matter—you should find something to say to them—you have plenty of gold, but no ready change about you. Now, as Lord Chesterfield tells us, you know, that will never do.”
Caroline was perfectly sensible of this—she knew she was deficient in the sort of conversation of the moment, requisite for fine company and public places.
“But when I have nothing to say, is not it better for me to say nothing, ma’am?”
“No, my dear—half the world are in that predicament; but would it mend our condition to reduce our parties to quakers’ silent meetings? My dear, you must condescend to talk, without saying any thing—and you must bear to hear and say the same words a hundred times over; and another thing, my dear Caroline—I wish you could cure yourself of looking fatigued. You will never be thought agreeable, unless you can endure, without showing that you are tired, the most stupid people extant—”