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'Was Mr Hatfield at the ball?'

'Yes, to be sure Did you think he was too good to go?'

'I thought be ht consider it unclerical'

'By no ; but it ith difficulty he could refrain, poorto ask ot 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 naive you his description in three words--an insensate, ugly, stupid blockhead That's four, but no h 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 iht upon each of them

'Well, which of the four do you like best?' said I, suppressing my third or fourth yawn

'I detest thelets in vivacious scorn

'That means, I suppose, "I like them all"--but which most?'

'No, I really detest the, 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 hi wicked: he's all the better for that; and as for disliking hi Lady Ashby of Ashby Park, if I , I would be always single I should like to enjoy hly, and coquet with all the world, till I a called an oldmade ten thousand conquests, to break all their hearts save one, by ent husband, who 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'