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.
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