“Well, your mamma thinks you ought not to go beyond the park or garden without some discreet, matronly person like me to accompany you, and keep off all intruders. She descried Mr. Hatfield hurrying past the park-gates, and forthwith despatched me with instructions to seek you up and to take care of you, and likewise to warn—” “Oh, mamma’s so tiresome! As if I couldn’t take care of myself. She bothered me before about Mr. Hatfield; and I told her she might trust me: I never should forget my rank and station for the most delightful man that ever breathed. I wish he would go down on his knees to-morrow, and implore me to be his wife, that I might just show her how mistaken she is in supposing that I could ever—Oh, it provokes me so! To think that I could be such a fool as to fall in _love_! It is quite beneath the dignity of a woman to do such a thing. Love! I detest the word! As applied to one of our sex, I think it a perfect insult. A preference I _might_ acknowledge; but never for one like poor Mr. Hatfield, who has not seven hundred a year to bless himself with. I like to talk to him, because he’s so clever and amusing—I wish Sir Thomas Ashby were half as nice; besides, I must have _somebody_ to flirt with, and no one else has the sense to come here; and when we go out, mamma won’t let me flirt with anybody but Sir Thomas—if he’s there; and if he’s _not_ there, I’m bound hand and foot, for fear somebody should go and make up some exaggerated story, and put it into his head that I’m engaged, or likely to be engaged, to somebody else; or, what is more probable, for fear his nasty old mother should see or hear of my ongoings, and conclude that I’m not a fit wife for her excellent son: as if the said son were not the greatest scamp in Christendom; and as if any woman of common decency were not a world too good for him.” “Is it really so, Miss Murray? and does your mamma know it, and yet wish you to marry him?” “To be sure, she does! She knows more against him than I do, I believe: she keeps it from me lest I should be discouraged; not knowing how little I care about such things. For it’s no great matter, really: he’ll be all right when he’s married, as mamma says; and reformed rakes make the best husbands, _everybody_ knows. I only wish he were not so ugly—_that’s_ all _I_ think about: but then there’s no choice here in the country; and papa _will not_ let us go to London—” “But I should think Mr. Hatfield would be far better.” “And so he would, if he were lord of Ashby Park—there’s not a doubt of it: but the fact is, I _must_ have Ashby Park, whoever shares it with me.” “But Mr. Hatfield thinks you like him all this time; you don’t consider how bitterly he will be disappointed when he finds himself mistaken.” “_No_, indeed! It will be a proper punishment for his presumption—for ever _daring_ to think I could like him. I should enjoy nothing so much as lifting the veil from his eyes.” “The sooner you do it the better then.”