Fitzgerald is Monsieur le Majeur, at your ladyship’s service:  he received his commission this morning.

I once again congratulate you, my dear, on this triumph of tenderness:  you see love, like virtue, is not only its own reward, but sometimes intitles us to other rewards too.

It should always be considered, that those who marry from love, may grow rich; but those who marry to be rich, will never love.

The very idea that love will come after marriage, is shocking to minds which have the least spark of delicacy:  to such minds, a marriage which begins with indifference will certainly end in disgust and aversion.

I bespeak your papa for my cecisbeo; mine is extremely at your service in return.

But I am piqued, my dear.  “Sentiments so noble, so peculiar to your Rivers—­”

I am apt to believe there are men in the world—­that nobleness of mind is not so very peculiar—­and that some people’s sentiments may be as noble as other people’s.

In short, I am inclined to fancy Fitzgerald would have acted just the same part in the same situation.

But it is your great fault, my dear Emily, to suppose your love a phoenix, whereas he is only an agreable, worthy, handsome fellow, comme un autre.

I suppose you will be very angry; but who cares?  I will be angry too.

Surely, my Fitzgerald—­I allow Rivers all his merit; but comparisons, my dear—­

Both our fellows, to be sure, are charming creatures; and I would not change them for a couple of Adonis’s:  yet I don’t insist upon it, that there is nothing agreable in the world but them.

You should remember, my dear, that beauty is in the lover’s eye; and that, however highly you may think of Rivers, every woman breathing has the same idea of the dear man.

O heaven!  I must tell you, because it will flatter your vanity about your charmer.

I have had a letter from an old lover of mine at Quebec, who tells me, Madame Des Roches has just refused one of the best matches in the country, and vows she will live and die a batchelor.

’Tis a mighty foolish resolution, and yet I cannot help liking her the better for making it.

My dear papa talks of taking a house near you, and of having a garden to rival yours:  we shall spend a good deal of time with him, and I shall make love to Rivers, which you know will be vastly pretty.

One must do something to give a little variety to life; and nothing is so amusing, or keeps the mind so pleasingly awake, especially in the country, as the flattery of an agreable fellow.

I am not, however, quite sure I shall not look abroad for a flirt, for one’s friend’s husband is almost as insipid as one’s own.

Our romantic adventures being at an end, my dear; and we being all degenerated into sober people, who marry and settle; we seem in great danger of sinking into vegetation:  on which subject I desire Rivers’s opinion, being, I know, a most exquisite enquirer into the laws of nature.