"_Now_ your ladyship is not serious, I am sure," said Caroline.

"Never more serious--never so serious in my life; and, I a.s.sure you,"

cried Lady Frances, speaking very earnestly and anxiously, "if you give the least hint, I will never forgive you while I live; for I have set my heart on doing the caricature."

"Impossible that, for the mere pleasure of drawing a caricature, you would let your own cousin expose herself with an adventurer!" said Caroline.

"La! Lady Angelica is only my cousin a hundred removes. I can't help her being ridiculous: every body, I dare say, has ridiculous cousins--and laugh one must. If one were forbidden to laugh at one's relatives, it would be sad indeed for those who have extensive connexions. Well, Lady Jane, I am glad to see that _you_ don't pique yourself on being too good to laugh: so I may depend on you. Our party for Lady Angelica's is fixed for Monday."

No--Lady Jane had, it is certain, some curiosity and some desire to laugh at her neighbour's expense. So far, Lady Frances had, with address, touched her foible for her purpose; but Lady Jane's affection for Caroline strengthened her against the temptation. She was persuaded that it would be a disadvantage to her to go to this conversazione. She would not upon any account have Miss Percy be seen in the blue-stocking set at present--she had her reasons. To this resolution her ladyship adhered, though Lady Frances Arlington, pertinacious to accomplish any purpose she took into her fancy, returned morning after morning to the charge. Sometimes she would come with intelligence from her fetcher and carrier of news, as she called him, Captain Nuttall.

One day, with a very dejected countenance, her ladyship came in saying, "It's off--it's all off! Nuttall thinks it will never be a match."

The next day, in high spirits, she brought word, "It's on--it's on again! Nuttall thinks it will certainly be a match--and Angelica is more delightfully ridiculous than ever! Now, my dear Lady Jane, Tuesday?--next week?--the week afterwards? In short, my dearest Lady Jane, once for all, will you ever take me to her conversazione?"

"Never, my dear Lady Frances, till Miss Caroline Percy is married," said Lady Jane: "I have my own reasons."

"Then I wish Miss Caroline Percy were to be married to-morrow--I have my own reasons. But, after all, tell me, is there any, the least chance of Miss Percy's being married?"

"Not the least chance," said Caroline.

"That is her own fault," said Lady Jane, looking mortified and displeased.

"That cannot be said of me, there's one comfort," cried Lady Frances.

"If I'm not married, 'tis not my fault; but my papa's, who, to _make an eldest son_, left me only a poor 5000_l._ portion. What a shame to rob daughters for sons, as the grandees do! I wish it had pleased Heaven to have made me the daughter of an honest merchant, who never thinks of this impertinence: then with my plum or plums, I might have chosen the first spend-thrift lord in the land, or, may be, I might have been blessed with an offer from that paragon of perfection, Lord William ----. Do you know what made him such a paragon of perfection? His elder brother's falling sick, and being like to die. Now, if the brother should recover, adieu to my Lord William's perfections."

"Not in the opinion of all," said Lady Jane. "Lord William was a favourite of mine, and I saw his merit long ago, and shall see it, whether his elder brother die or recover."

"At all events," continued Lady Frances, "he will be a paragon, you will see, only till he is married, and then--

'How shall I your true love know From any other man?'

"By-the-bye, the other day, Lord William, in flying from the chase of matrons, in his fright (he always looks like a frightened hare, poor creature!) took refuge between you two ladies. Seriously, Lady Jane, do you know I think you _manage_ vastly well for your protegee--you are not so _broad_ as Mrs. Falconer."

"_Broad!_ I beg your ladyship's pardon for repeating your word," cried Lady Jane, looking quite angry, and feeling too angry to parry, as she usually did, with wit: "I really don't understand your ladyship."

"Then I must wish your ladyship a good morning, for I've no time or talents for explanation," said Lady Frances, running off, delighted to have produced a sensation.

Lady Jane rang for her carriage, and made no observations on what had pa.s.sed. But in the evening she declared that she would not take Lady Frances Arlington out with her any more, that her ladyship's spirits were too much for her. "Besides, my dear Caroline, when she is with you, I never hear you speak a word--you leave it entirely to her ladyship.

After all, she is, if you observe, a perfectly selfish creature."

Lady Jane recollected various instances of this.

"She merely makes a tool of me--my carriage, my servants, my time, myself, always to be at her service, whenever the aunt-d.u.c.h.ess cannot, or will not, do her ladyship's behests. For the slightest errand she could devise, she would send me to the antipodes; bid me fetch her a toothpick from the farthest inch of the city. Well! I could pardon all the trouble she gives for her fancies, if she would take any trouble for others in return. No--ask her to do the least thing for you, and she tells you, she'd be very glad, but she does not know how; or, she would do it this minute, but that she has not time; or, she would have remembered it certainly, but that she forgot it."

Caroline admitted that Lady Frances was thoughtless and giddy, but she hoped not incurably selfish, as Lady Jane now seemed to suppose.

"Pardon me, she is incurably selfish. Her childishness made me excuse her for a great while: I fancied she was so giddy that she could not remember any thing; but I find she never forgets any thing on which she has set her own foolish head. Giddy! I can't bear people who are too giddy to think of any body but themselves."

Caroline endeavoured to excuse her ladyship, by saying that, by all accounts, she had been educated in a way that must make her selfish.

"Idolized, and spoiled, I think you told me she was?"

"True, very likely; let her mother, or her grandmother, settle that account--I am not to blame, and I will not suffer for it. You know, if we entered like your father into the question of education, we might go back to Adam and Eve, and find n.o.body to blame but them. In the mean time, I will not take Lady Frances Arlington out with me any more--on this point I am determined; for, suppose I forgave her selfishness and childishness, and _all that_, why should I be subject to her impertinence? She has been suffered to say whatever comes into her head, and to think it wit. Now, as far as I am concerned, I will teach her better."

Caroline, who always saw the best side of characters, pleaded her freedom from art and dissimulation.

"My dear Caroline, she is not half so free from dissimulation as you are from envy and jealousy. She is always in your way, and you never see it. I can't bear to hear you defend her, when I know she would and does sacrifice you at any time and at all times to her own amus.e.m.e.nt. But she shall not stand in your light--for you are a generous, unsuspicious creature. Lady Frances shall never go out with me again--and I have just thought of an excellent way of settling that matter. I'll change my coach for a vis-a-vis, which will carry only two."

This Lady Jane, quick and decided, immediately accomplished; she adhered to her resolution, and never did take Lady Frances Arlington out with her more.

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 a.s.sented fully to the truth of this remark; a.s.sured 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--"

Caroline smiled, and said she recollected her father's telling her that "the Prince de Ligne, the most agreeable man of his day, declared that his secret depended, not on his wit or talents for conversation, but on his power of concealing the ennui he felt in stupid company."

"Well, my dear, _I_ tell you so, as well as the Prince de Ligne, and let me see that you benefit by it to-morrow."

The next night they went to a large party at a very fine lady's. It was dull, but Caroline did her best to look happy, and exerted herself to talk to please Lady Jane, who, from her card-table, from time to time, looked at her, nodded and smiled. When they got into their carriage, Lady Jane, before she had well drawn up the gla.s.s, began to praise her for her performance this evening. "Really, my dear, you got on very well to-night; and I hear Miss Caroline Percy is very agreeable. And, shall I tell you who told me so?--No; that would make you too vain. But I'll leave you to sleep upon what has been said--to-morrow you shall hear more."

The next morning, Caroline had stolen away from visitors, and quietly in her own room was endeavouring to proceed in her copy of the miniature for Mr. Gresham, when Lady Jane came into her apartment, with a letter and its cover in her hand. "A letter in which you, Caroline, are deeply concerned."

A sudden hope darted across Caroline's imagination and illuminated her countenance. As suddenly it vanished, when she saw on the cover of the letter, no foreign post-mark, no foreign hand--but a hand unknown to her.

"Deeply concerned! How can I--how--how am I concerned in this, ma'am?"

she asked--with difficulty commanding her voice to articulate the words.

"Only a proposal for you, my dear," said Lady Jane, smiling: "not a proposal for which you need blush, as you'll see if you'll read."

But observing that Caroline was not at this moment capable of reading, without seeming to notice the tremor of her hand, and that she was holding the letter upside down before her eyes, Lady Jane, with kind politeness, pa.s.sed on to the picture at which her young friend had been at work, and stooping to examine the miniature with her gla.s.s, made some observations on the painting, and gave Caroline time to recover. Nor did her ladyship look up till Caroline exclaimed, "John Clay!--English Clay!"