This speech from Euphemia (who had always been so declared an enemy to pedantry as to affirm that she learnt German merely because it was the fashion) would have awakened Miss Dundas to some suspicion of a covert design, had she not been in the habit of taking down such large draughts of adulation, that whenever herself was the subject, she gave it full confidence. Euphemia seldom administered these doses but to serve particular views; and seeing in the present case that a little flattery was necessary, she felt no compunction in sacrificing sincerity to the gratification of caprice. Weak in understanding, she had fed on works of imagination, until her mind loathed all kinds of food. Not content with devouring the elegant pages of Mackenzie, Radcliffe, and Lee, she flew with voracious appetite to sate herself on the garbage of any circulating library that fell in her way. The effects of such a taste were exhibited in her manners. Being very pretty, she became very sentimental. She dressed like a wood nymph, and talked as if her soul were made of love and sorrow. Neither of these emotions had she ever really felt; but in idea she was always the victim of some ill-fated passion, fancying herself at different periods in love with one or other of the finest young men in her circle. By this management she kept faithful to her favorite principle that "love was a want of her soul!" As it was the rule of her life, it ever trembled on her tongue, ever introduced the confession of any new attachment, which usually happened three times a year, to her dear friend Miss Arabella Rothes. Fortunately for the longevity of their mutual friendship, this young lady lived in an ancient house, forty miles to the north of London. This latter circumstance proved a pretty distress for their pens to descant on; and Arabella remained a most charming sentimental writing-stock, to receive the catalogue of Miss Euphemia's lovers; indeed, that gentle creature might have matched every lady in Cowley's calendar with a gentleman. But every throb of her heart must have acknowledged a different master. First, the fashionable sloven, Augustus Somers, lounged and sauntered himself into her good graces; but his dishevelled hair, and otherwise neglected toilette, not exactly meeting her ideas of an elegant lover, she gave him up at the end of three weeks. The next object her eyes fell upon, as most opposite to her former fancy, was the charming Marquis of Inverary. But here all her arrows failed, for she never could extract from him more than a "how d'ye do?" through the long lapse of four months, during which time she continued as constant to his fine figure, and her own folly, as could have fallen to the lot of any poor despairing damsel. However, my lord was so cruel, so perfidious, as to allow several opportunities to pass in which he might have declared his passion; and she told Arabella, in a letter of six sheets, that she would bear it no longer.