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THE

LIFE AND ADVENTURES

OF A

CLEVER WOMAN.

ILLUSTRATED WITH

OCCASIONAL EXTRACTS FROM HER DIARY.

BY MRS. TROLLOPE,

AUTHOR OF

"FATHER EUSTACE," "THE BARNABYS," "MRS. MATHEWS," &c.

IN THREE VOLUMES.

VOL. III.

LONDON:

HURST AND BLACKETT, PUBLISHERS,

SUCCESSORS TO HENRY COLBURN,

13, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET.

1854.

249. J. 61.

THE LIFE AND ADVENTURES

OF A

CLEVER WOMAN.

CHAPTER I.

EXTRACT FROM CHARLOTTE MORRIS' DIARY.

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WHAT in the world can have occurred to produce this extraordinary change in Montague Herbert ? He is no longer like the same man! The very colour of his eyes seems to me altered, and he looks about a dozen years younger than he did a week ago.

"Is it possible that he has at last opened

VOL. III.

B

his eyes to the obvious fact, that the best thing he can do is to marry me?

"There is his beautiful sister Catherine naturally enough made a lion of, and taken about by some of the highest born and most fashionable people in town; while he really seems to be no more thought of than if he did not exist! This may account, it is true, for the gloomy, absent air which I have so often remarked in him of late; but what can explain the sudden change from listlessness to animation, and from a countenance as gloomy as night to an aspect as radiant as a sunny morning? Unless it be the result of some sudden resolve, which he thinks may relieve him from the pitiable position of being nobody, I am totally at a loss to conjecture the cause. If this be so—if I am right in 'my suspicion—it would serve him perfectly right if I were to let him kneel at my feet for an hour before I gave him an answer. But if I did so, I suppose he would feel perfectly sure that the answer would be favourable at last!

"I do believe that every man alive is more or less a coxcomb. And yet in this instance,

at least, this coxcombality is only another word for discernment; for can I pretend to think even for an instant, that I believe it possible I could refuse him?

"If I am right in my conjecture of what I suppose is about to happen, I do not think I shall be far wrong in attributing this sudden resolution to the marked success that I have lately had in society.

"I certainly have not as yet got the entrée to all the noble mansions to which his sister Catherine has found her way; but when I remember whence I set out, and compare it with the point at which I am arrived, I am as much disposed as he can be to anticipate that I shall advance a good deal further still.

"I particularly remarked the demeanour of this strangely mysterious, but strangely fascinating man, the last day he dined here. At dinner he was positively cross. Of course I

I

could not let him lead me down stairs when Sir Charles Wrington was here to do it, and suppose it was this which made him look so deplorably miserable and out of spirits. Upon my word, men are too ridiculous! And after

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