When that gentleman was at length with some difficulty convinced that our heiress had decided against him, his manners and those of his family changed towards her from the extreme of civility to that of rudeness--they spoke of her as a coquette and a jilt, and a person who gave herself very extraordinary airs. She was vexed, and alarmed--and in her first confusion and distress thought of retreating to her friends at Elmour Grove. She wrote a folio sheet to Ellen, unlike her late apologetic epistles, full of the feelings of her heart, and of a warm invective against fashionable and interested _friends_. After a narrative of her quarrel with the Stocks, she declared that she would immediately quit her London acquaintance and return to her best friend. But the very day after she had despatched this letter she changed her mind, and formed a new idea of a _best friend_. One morning she went with Lady Stock to a bookseller’s, whose shop served as a fashionable _lounge_. Her ladyship valued books, like all other things, in proportion to the money which they cost: she had no taste for literature, but a great fancy for accumulating the most expensive publications, which she displayed ostentatiously as part of the costly furniture of her house. Whilst she was looking over some literary luxuries, rich in all the elegance of hot-press and vellum binding, Lady Bradstone and a party of her friends came into the room. She immediately attracted and engrossed the attention of all present. Lady Stock turned over the leaves of the fine books, and asked their prices; but she had the mortification to perceive that she was an object rather of derision than of admiration to the new comers. None are so easily put out of countenance by airs, as those who are most apt to play them off on their inferiors. Lady Stock bit her lips in evident embarrassment, and the awkwardness of her distress increased the confidence and triumph of her adversary. She had some time before provoked Lady Bradstone by giving a concert in opposition to one of hers, and by engaging, at an enormous expense, a celebrated performer for _her night_: hostilities had thenceforward been renewed at every convenient opportunity, by the contending fair ones. Lady Bradstone now took occasion loudly to lament her extreme poverty; and she put this question to all her party, whether if they had it in their power they should prefer having more money than taste, or more taste than money? They were going to decide _par acclamation_, but her ladyship insisted upon taking each vote separately, because this prolonged the torments of her rival, who heard the preference of taste to money reiterated half a dozen times over, with the most provoking variety of insulting emphasis. Almeria’s sufferings during this scene were far more poignant than those of the person against whom the ridicule was aimed: not that she pitied Lady Stock--no; she would have rejoiced to have seen her humbled to the