This man, this Mr. Hickman, my dear, is too meek for a man.  Indeed he is.—­But my patient mother twits me, that her passionate daughter ought to like him the better for that.  But meek men abroad are not always meek at home.  I have observed that in more instances than one:  and if they were, I should not, I verily think, like them the better for being so.

He then turned to my mother, resolved to be even with her too:  Where, good Madam, could Miss Howe get all this spirit?

The company around smiled; for I need not tell you that my mother’s high spiritedness is pretty well known; and she, sadly vexed, said, Sir, you treat me, as you do the rest of the world—­but—­

I beg pardon, Madam, interrupted he:  I might have spared my question—­and instantly (I retiring to the other end of the hall) he turned to Miss Playford; What would I give, Madam, to hear you sing that song you obliged us with at Lord M.’s!

He then, as if nothing had happened, fell into a conversation with her and Miss D’Ollyffe, upon music; and whisperingly sung to Miss Playford; holding her two hands, with such airs of genteel unconcern, that it vexed me not a little to look round, and see how pleased half the giddy fools of our sex were with him, notwithstanding his notorious wicked character.  To this it is that such vile fellows owe much of their vileness:  whereas, if they found themselves shunned, and despised, and treated as beasts of prey, as they are, they would run to their caverns; there howl by themselves; and none but such as sad accident, or unpitiable presumption, threw in their way, would suffer by them.

He afterwards talked very seriously, at times, to Mr. Hickman:  at times, I say; for it was with such breaks and starts of gaiety, turning to this lady, and to that, and then to Mr. Hickman again, resuming a serious or a gay air at pleasure, that he took every body’s eye, the women’s especially; who were full of their whispering admirations of him, qualified with if’s and but’s, and what pity’s, and such sort of stuff, that showed in their very dispraises too much liking.

Well may our sex be the sport and ridicule of such libertines!  Unthinking eye-governed creatures!—­Would not a little reflection teach us, that a man of merit must be a man of modesty, because a diffident one? and that such a wretch as this must have taken his degrees in wickedness, and gone through a course of vileness, before he could arrive at this impenetrable effrontery? an effrontery which can produce only from the light opinion he has of us, and the high one of himself.

But our sex are generally modest and bashful themselves, and are too apt to consider that which in the main is their principal grace, as a defect:  and finely do they judge, when they think of supplying that defect by choosing a man that cannot be ashamed.

His discourse to Mr. Hickman turned upon you, and his acknowledged injuries of you:  though he could so lightly start from the subject, and return to it.