At this remark, Miss Glossop smiled inwardly, but she took especial care not to manifest any outward and visible signs of mirth, lest she might provoke her ladyship to exercise some inconvenient mode of retaliation. Nor, on the other hand, could the young lady so far attempt the mask of hypocrisy as expressly and explicitly to disavow all thought and suspicion of ill-humour on the part of Lady Aimwell. Being however somewhat indignant at the pertinacity with which her ladyship kept up the hostility, and thinking that a little semblance of opposition would be better than a placid and unyielding acquiescence in the gratuitous accusations and assumptions of her ladyship, Miss Glossop, with some degree of her natural tartness, replied: “I think, Lady Aimwell, that you are treating me very ill to put an unfavourable construction on everything I say or do; I am sure I have not the slightest wish to behave disrespectfully to you; but you will not give me leave to pay you ordinary civilities without misinterpreting them.” Now her ladyship knew that there was truth in this, therefore, fearing that she might be worsted in a regular argument, she thought it advisable to change the mode of attack, and, instead of continuing the discussion in that line, Lady Aimwell replied, “You may talk as long as you please, Miss Glossop, but nobody can make me believe that your conduct towards Lord Spoonbill the other day was at all becoming, or even decent.” This was a repetition of a former attack, and as in the first instance this attack had driven the young lady to passionate weeping, Lady Aimwell was in expectation that a renewal of it would produce a renewal of the young lady’s sobs and tears. But in this calculation the baronet’s lady reckoned wrong. The conversation which Miss Glossop had had the preceding evening with Colonel Crop, and the bright prospects which lay before her, of rank and opulence and luxury and homage, rendered an allusion of this nature rather agreeable than otherwise. Instead therefore of yielding, as before, to the down-rushing tear and the passionate sobbing, the possible countess replied with spirit and vivacity, “Lord Spoonbill is as well qualified to judge of propriety as any one. And if I said or did anything disrespectful to his lordship, it is his concern.” In this reply we by no means vindicate Miss Glossop; we rather think that she was much to blame; for young men are not such good judges of propriety as old ladies; and it is not to be supposed, that if a pretty-looking young woman, as Miss Glossop certainly was, should behave with impertinent forwardness towards so gay and gallant a young gentleman as Lord Spoonbill, that his lordship would reprove her, and administer a wholesome lesson on the subject of decorum.