“Very fine, no doubt,” said Wright; “but I am no judge of these matters; only this I am sure of, that, with respect to selling Clover-hill, you had best go slowly to work, and see what the sister is, before you trust to the brother. It is not for my interest, I very well know, to advise you against this scheme; because, if I wanted to make certain of your not coming in for my uncle’s legacy, I could not take a better way than to urge you to follow your fancy. For, say that you lay out all you have in the world on the building of this playhouse, and say that Barton’s as honest a man as yourself: observe, your playhouse cannot be built in less than a couple of years, and the interest of your money must be dead all that time; and pray how are you to bring yourself up, by the end of the ten years? Consider, there are but seven years of the time to come.” Marvel gave his cousin hearty thanks for his disinterested advice, but observed that actors and managers of playhouses were, of all men, they who were most likely to grow rich in a trice; that they often cleared many hundreds in one night for their benefits; that even, if he should fail to hit the public taste himself, as an actor, he was sure at least, if he married the charming Alicia, that she would be a source of inexhaustible wealth. “Not,” added he, “that I think of her in that light; for my soul is as much superior to mercenary considerations as her own.” “More, perhaps,” said Wright; but seeing fire flash in his cousin’s eyes at this insinuation, he contented himself for the present with the promise he had obtained, that nothing should be concluded till the end of one week; that no mention should be made to Miss Barton, or her brother, of his arrival in town; and that he should have free liberty to make trial of the lady’s truth and constancy, in any way he should think proper. Back to his friend the milliner’s he posted directly. Miss Barton was gone out upon the race-ground in Captain Mowbray’s curricle: in her absence, Wright was received very graciously by the milliner, who had lodgings to let, and who readily agreed to let them to him for a week, as he offered half a guinea more than she could get from anybody else. She fancied that he was deeply smitten with Miss Barton’s charms, and encouraged his passion, by pretty broad hints that it was reciprocal. Miss Barton drank tea this evening with the milliner: Wright was of the party, and he was made to understand that _others_ had been excluded: “for Miss Barton,” her friend observed, “was very _nice_ as to her company.”