Adieu, my dearest Harriet. May angels protect and guide you withersoever you go!
LUCY SELBY.
II.--Miss Byron to Miss Selby
Grosvenor Street, London, February 3. We are returned from a party at Lady Betty's. She had company with her, to whom she introduced us, and presented me in a very advantageous character. But mutual civilities had hardly passed when Lady Betty, having been called out, returned, introducing as a gentleman who would be acceptable to everyone, Sir Hargrave Pollexfen. "He is," whispered she to me, as he saluted the rest of the company in a very gallant manner, "a young baronet of a very large estate; the greatest part of which has lately come to him by the death of relatives, all very rich." Let me give you a sketch of him, my Lucy.
Sir Hargrave Pollexfen is handsome and genteel; pretty tall, about twenty-eight or thirty. He has remarkably bold eyes, rather approaching to what we would call goggling, and he gives himself airs with them, as if he wished to have them thought rakish; perhaps as a recommendation, in his opinion, to the ladies. With all his foibles he is said to be a man of enterprise and courage, and young women, it seems, must take care how they laugh with him, for he makes ungenerous constructions to the disadvantage of a woman whom he can bring to seem pleased with his jests.
The taste of the present age seems to be dress; no wonder, therefore, that such a man as Sir Hargrave aims to excel in it. What can be misbestowed by a man on his person who values it more than his mind? But what a length I have run!
III.--Miss Byron: In Continuation
We found at home, waiting for Mr. Reeves's return, Sir John Allestree, a worthy, sensible man, of plain and unaffected manners, upwards of fifty.
Mr. Reeves mentioning to him our past entertainment and company, Sir John gave us such an account of Sir Hargrave as let me know that he is a very dangerous and enterprising man. He says that, laughing and light as he is in company, he is malicious, ill-natured, and designing, and sticks at nothing to carry a point on which he has once set his heart. He has ruined, Sir John says, three young creatures already, under vows of marriage.
Could you have thought, my Lucy, that this laughing, fine-dressing man, could have been a man of malice, and of resentment, a cruel man, yet Sir John told two very bad stories of him.