Lady Aimwell was precisely of our opinion on this point, and answered accordingly, “Miss Glossop, are you a downright simpleton? Or what do you mean by such language? Nothing could be better amusement for Lord Spoonbill, than to see you make a fool of yourself.” Here Lady Aimwell had clearly the advantage of Miss Glossop. It was indeed true, that Lord Spoonbill had been mightily amused with seeing the ridiculous and fantastic airs which the young lady shewed off at the castle. But though Lady Aimwell was right, the young lady thought she was wrong. And from what Miss Glossop had heard on the preceding evening from Colonel Crop, there was not in her mind the remotest suspicion that Lord Spoonbill had regarded her demeanour with any other feeling than that of approbation. Several times was Miss Glossop on the very brink of exultingly avowing to her ladyship what had been said by Colonel Crop concerning the approbation which that discriminating judge of propriety Lord Spoonbill had been pleased to express of herself. But as frequently she checked herself, since she thought that the mode in which Lord Spoonbill had conveyed to her his approbation and admiration were not quite according to the etiquette of Lady Aimwell’s grandmother’s sampler. The inward consciousness however that Lord Spoonbill was graciously disposed towards her, gave her unusual calmness and composure, so that she could patiently bear much of the rebuke that was addressed to her by Lady Aimwell. But at last came the grand, decisive, interrogatory, which referred to Colonel Crop’s negociation. Now we cannot approve Lady Aimwell’s conduct in leaving her young friend exposed to such negociation; for it was very obvious, that on the preceding evening her ladyship had retired early, because she was displeased with the visible symptoms of Colonel Crop’s extraordinary attention to the young lady. With an exulting and almost triumphing confidence did Lady Aimwell say, “Now, pray, Miss Glossop, may I take the liberty to ask, did your friend Colonel Crop deliver any message to you from your favorite Lord Spoonbill?” There was a sneer in the phraseology of this question, there was also a still stronger expression of contempt in the tone and cadence of it. And thereat Miss Glossop coloured, not blushed merely with maiden diffidence and modesty, but coloured with mighty and puissant indignation at the question, at the language in which it was conveyed, and at the tone in which it was uttered. The consciousness that she was destined to a high rank in society, and that she was honored with the approbation of so great a man as Lord Spoonbill, gave her an additional confidence, and increased her natural pertness, and she replied, “If your ladyship must know, I can tell you that Colonel Crop did deliver a message to me from Lord Spoonbill. What that message was, your ladyship may know hereafter.”