'Was Mr. Hatfield at the ball?'
'Yes, to be sure. Did you think he was too good to go?'
'I thought be might consider it unclerical.'
'By no means. He did not profane his cloth by dancing; but it was with difficulty he could refrain, poor man: he looked as if he were dying to ask my hand just for ONE set; and--oh! by-the-by-- he's got a new curate: that seedy old fellow Mr. Bligh has got his long-wished-for living at last, and is gone.'
'And what is the new one like?'
'Oh, SUCH a beast! Weston his name is. I can give you his description in three words--an insensate, ugly, stupid blockhead. That's four, but no matter--enough of HIM now.'
Then she returned to the ball, and gave me a further account of her deportment there, and at the several parties she had since attended; and further particulars respecting Sir Thomas Ashby and Messrs. Meltham, Green, and Hatfield, and the ineffaceable impression she had wrought upon each of them.
'Well, which of the four do you like best?' said I, suppressing my third or fourth yawn.
'I detest them all!' replied she, shaking her bright ringlets in vivacious scorn.
'That means, I suppose, "I like them all"--but which most?'
'No, I really detest them all; but Harry Meltham is the handsomest and most amusing, and Mr. Hatfield the cleverest, Sir Thomas the wickedest, and Mr. Green the most stupid. But the one I'm to have, I suppose, if I'm doomed to have any of them, is Sir Thomas Ashby.'
'Surely not, if he's so wicked, and if you dislike him?'
'Oh, I don't mind his being wicked: he's all the better for that; and as for disliking him--I shouldn't greatly object to being Lady Ashby of Ashby Park, if I must marry. But if I could be always young, I would be always single. I should like to enjoy myself thoroughly, and coquet with all the world, till I am on the verge of being called an old maid; and then, to escape the infamy of that, after having made ten thousand conquests, to break all their hearts save one, by marrying some high-born, rich, indulgent husband, whom, on the other hand, fifty ladies were dying to have.'
'Well, as long as you entertain these views, keep single by all means, and never marry at all: not even to escape the infamy of old-maidenhood.'