Even Harry
Clinton himself, though but a young man, thought, as he afterwards
stated to his sister, that he never saw Hycy have so much the appearance
of a puppy as upon that occasion. As had been proposed, he withdrew,
however, and the lover being left in the drawing-room with Miss Clinton
began, with a simper that was rather coxcombical, to make allusions to
the weather, but in such a way as if there was some deep but delightful
meaning veiled under his commonplaces. At length he came directly to the
'point.
"But passing from the weather, Miss Clinton, to a much more agreeable
topic, permit me to ask if you have ever turned your thoughts upon
matrimony?"
The hectic of a moment, as Sterne. says, accompanied by a look that
slightly intimated displeasure, or something like it, was the only reply
he received for a quarter of a minute, when she said, after the feeling
probably had passed away--"No, indeed, Mr. Burke, I have not."
"Come, come, Miss Clinton," said Hycy, with another smirk, "that won't
pass. Is it not laid down by the philosophers that you think of little
else from the time you are marriageable?"
"By what philosophers?"
"Why, let me see--by the philosophers in general--ha! ha! ha!"
"I was not aware of that," she replied; "but even if they have so ruled
it, I see no inference we can draw from that, except their ignorance of
the subject.
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