“I do nothing by halves, my dear. I shall not tell you my adventures as Gil Blas told his to the Count d’Olivarez--skipping over the _useful_ passages. I am no hypocrite, and have nothing worse than folly to conceal: that’s bad enough--for a woman who is known to play the fool is always suspected of playing the devil. But I begin where I ought to end--with my moral, which I dare say you are not impatient to anticipate. I never read or listened to a moral at the end of a story in my life:--manners for me, and morals for those that like them. My dear, you will be woefully disappointed if in my story you expect any thing like a novel. I once heard a general say, that nothing was less like a review than a battle; and I can tell you that nothing is more unlike a novel than real life. Of all lives, mine has been the least romantic. No love in it, but a great deal of hate. I was a rich heiress--I had, I believe, a hundred thousand pounds, or more, and twice as many caprices: I was handsome and witty--or, to speak with that kind of circumlocution which is called humility, the world, the partial world, thought me a beauty and a bel-esprit. Having told you my fortune, need I add, that I, or it, had lovers in abundance--of all sorts and degrees--not to reckon those, it may be presumed, who died of concealed passions for me? I had sixteen declarations and proposals in form; then what in the name of wonder, or of common sense--which by-the-bye is the greatest of wonders--what, in the name of common sense, made me marry Lord Delacour? Why, my dear, you--no, not _you_, but any girl who is not used to have a parcel of admirers, would think it the easiest thing in the world to make her choice; but let her judge by what she feels when a dexterous mercer or linen-draper produces pretty thing after pretty thing--and this is so becoming, and this will wear for ever, as he swears; but then that’s so fashionable;--the novice stands in a charming perplexity, and after examining, and doubting, and tossing over half the goods in the shop, it’s ten to one, when it begins to get late, the young lady, in a hurry, pitches upon the very ugliest and worst thing that she has seen. Just so it was with me and my lovers, and just so-- ‘Sad was the hour, and luckless was the day,’