ABSTRACT
The preparations for a splendid dinner succeeded admirably, and Mrs. Thorold was in high good humour when her guests arrived. Arabella was still better pleased; for Bettenson, immediately on his entrance, had protested that she never looked so well in her life, and Musgrave whispered to her, that ‘if she minded her hits she would be sure of the pretty boy,’ for so he, the Cornet, was termed by his Captain. Intelligence so conveyed would have disgusted and offended a young woman of delicacy, but Belle Thorold was too eager for conquest, and too resolutely bent on securing a man of fortune, to feel or to resent the freedom of this address from Musgrave, to whose praises of her she knew much of the attention of Bettenson was owing. Mr. and Mrs. Cranfield and Vavasour soon after arrived; and Celestina saw with surprise the pains Miss Thorold took at once to attract the notice of Vavasour, and encrease the admiration of Bettenson. She had never before seen her in the company of young unmarried men of fortune, and now observed with concern how totally she defeated her own purpose. She threw herself into numberless attitudes which she fancied becoming; applied her hand incessantly to rectify a curl, or adjust her necklace, by which she thought to display it’s beauty as well as that of her hair, and her throat, which she had been taught to fancy eminently handsome. She whispered about nothing, laughed at some joke which nobody understood but herself and Musgrave, then affected to be angry at something he said to her, then talked to him by signs across the table, and by way of being charming was rude and childish. But this sort of behaviour she had seen practiced by some very fashionable young women; it was perfectly adapted to the level of Bettenson’s capacity; and she had not judgment enough to see that it must offend any man who had either good sense or good breeding.
