Sandford knew the hearts of women, as well as those of men, though he had passed little of his time in their society—he saw Miss Milner’s heart at the first view of her person; and beholding in that little circumference a weight of folly that he wished to eradicate, he began to toil in the vineyard, eagerly courting her detestation of him, in the hope he could also make her abominate herself. In the mortifications of slight he was expert; and being a man of talents, whom all companies, especially her friends, respected, he did not begin by wasting that reverence so highly valued upon ineffectual remonstrances, of which he could foresee the reception, but wakened her attention by his neglect of her. He spoke of her in her presence as of an indifferent person, sometimes forgetting even to name her when the subject required it; then would ask her pardon, and say that he “Really did not recollect her,” with such seeming sorrow for his fault, that she could not think the offence intended, and of course felt the affront more acutely. While, with every other person she was the principle, the cause upon whom a whole party depended for conversation, cards, musick, or dancing, with Mr. Sandford she found that she was of no importance. Sometimes she tried to consider this disregard of her as merely the effect of ill-breeding; but he was not an ill-bred man: he was a gentleman by birth, and one who had kept the best company—a man of sense and learning. “And such a man slights me without knowing it,” she said—for she had not dived so deeply into the powers of simulation, as to suspect that such careless manners were the result of art. This behaviour of Mr. Sandford had its desired effect—it humbled her in her own opinion more than a thousand sermons would have done preached on the vanity of youth and beauty. She felt an inward shame at the insignificance of these qualities that she never knew before, and would have been cured of all her pride, had she not possessed a degree of spirit beyond the generality of her sex—such a degree as even Mr. Sandford, with all his penetration, did not expect. She determined to resent his treatment; and, entering the lists as his declared enemy, give to the world a reason why he did not acknowledge her sovereignty, as well as the rest of her devoted subjects.