THE NEW

MONTHLY BELLE ASSEMBLÉE.

APRIL, 1846.

SOME PASSAGES IN THE LIFE OF A COQUETTE.

BY MRS. ABDY.

(Concluded from page 139.)

siderable distance in perspective, if not quite out | learned from a second letter that Mrs. Compton

of sight. This disclosure drew upon me a volley of inquiries respecting the reason of the obstacles, "had the lovers quarrelled? what was the cause of the dispute?" My father surmised that it was about the settlement, and my mother concluded that Mr. Luttrell had wished to retract his promise of receiving Mrs. Compton as an inmate.

"I believe," I answered hesitatingly, "that Luttrell and Hester found out that they were not suited to each other."

addressed to her, that Hester had collected together her little scattered flock of pupils without much trouble; some of their parents had not engaged any fresh preceptress, and those who had done so had frequently recurred with regret to the patience, the talents, and above all the low terms of Miss Compton, and were happy to receive her back again. Poor Hester! the happiness was not reciprocated; the tread-mill of tuition seemed more than ever insufferable to her, and to complete her trials some of her coarse-minded patronesses assailed her with questions concerning the reason why her en

"In what respect were they not suited?" asked my mother. "Why could they not have found that out before matters had gone so far?" in-gagement with Luttrell had been broken off, quired my father in a breath.

et

and some even hinted to her that probably her
vanity had deceived her, and that Luttrell had
meant nothing serious by his attentions to her.
My mother wept over this letter, indeed her
health was evidently shaken by the late occur
rences; and when I summed the
up
pour
contre of my second successful passage of co-
quetry, I found that I had purchased a few days'
admiration from a very silly young man by
ruining for life the prospects of an excellent and
unoffending girl, my relative and early friend,
and by grieving the heart and injuring the
health of my own dear mother. My father also
was seriously displeased with me; he merely
sanctioned flirting and coquetry in a girl if she
adopted those measures for the purpose of
gaining herself an eligible establishment; but
my attempt to rival another without the most
distant idea of accepting the suitor when I had
succeeded in alluring him, was, he observed, so
thoroughly artful and unprincipled, that it was
degrading to an honest Englishman to possess
a daughter capable of acting so. My brother,
who left college about that time, also kindly and
earnestly remonstrated with me on the course I
was pursuing, and I began to think that the

I answered neither of their queries, but pleaded a violent head-ache, and retired to my own room. I was not however to remain unexposed: the next day Mrs. Compton wrote to my mother, giving her an exact account of all that had transpired during my visit, and enclosing a copy of Luttrell's letter to me. My mother was more grieved and wounded at this communication than I could have thought her calm and easy temper would have allowed her to be. None were more ready than herself to make allowances for thoughtlessness and even indiscretion in a young person, but she was truly benevolent and strictly conscientious; and the idea of deliberately assailing the happiness of another was indescribably revolting to her; she was attached to her cousin, Mrs. Compton, she had caressed Hester in her childhood, had contributed to the expenses of her education in her girlhood, and had unaffectedly rejoiced at the bright prospects of her womanhood; now those prospects were blighted, and by whom? by her own treacherous and unfeeling daughter. She set forth to me most clearly the culpability of my conduct. I expressed sorrow for the past, and when Luttrell the next day addressed a letter to me I enclosed it to him unopened in a blank cover, thus revenging my own mortification on him who was in reality far less culpable than "Three months passed: my mother's health myself, for he had been the sought and not the declined, and the medical men reiterated their seeker in our brief love affair, and had laboured declaration that any violent agitation experienced under all the disadvantages which a weak mind by her might speedily cause the most fatal constantly experiences when brought into juxta-effects to ensue. My father observed, that such position with a strong one. He did not however being the case, he thought it was desirable that break his heart, but some time afterwards fell we should live in as retired a manner as possible, into the snares of a scheming mother, who since nothing was so likely to cause injurious gained him for her fifth daughter. The young agitation to my mother as any new symptoms of lady (as by a strange good fortune the daugh-levity on my part. Accordingly our mode of ters of scheming mothers sometimes are) was amiable, sensible, and domestic; and Luttrell, who was precisely the sort of character to be always swayed by those with whom he was connected, made her a very good and affectionate husband. I was thus deprived of the only balm my conscience could have received under the circumstances. Had Luttrell turned out extravagant and dissipated, I could have fancied that I deserved Hester's gratitude rather than her resentment for depriving her of such a partner for life. Now, however, I could only regard myself with blame and her with pity. My mother

series of lectures' to which I was obliged to listen, formed no slight drawback to the glory of my successful campaign of coquetry.

life was such as to afford me no temptation to transgress, and I received the approbation of my parents for my reserved and discreet behaviour, when, in reality, I had no opportunity offered to me of behaving otherwise.

"About this time an event occurred which seemed likely to prove of material benefit to our family. My father had a distant relation of the name of Brereton, who had gone out to India many years ago, and amassed a large fortune there. He had now returned to England in a very precarious state of health, found none of his connexions living but my father, and wrote

cheeks;' he was in reality about sixty, but
looked at least seventy, from the effects of ill-
ness; he was lazy, luxurious, and rather irritable;
his daily business was talking about India, his
evening pastime playing at whist.
All pro-

to him to volunteer a visit to him, hinting, in a manner neither very delicate nor very obscure, that if he were pleased with himself and his family, it might materially guide his views as to the ultimate destination of his property. My father was in raptures at the time when it ap-gressed most satisfactorily; I was soon his depeared likely that we should speedily be reduced cided favourite; he had no ear for music, and to a small income, how acceptable appeared the no taste for poetry, therefore my accomplishprobability of the nabob's golden stores! He ments in these respects were not of much avail wrote an answer, in which he expressed his un- to me; but the skill which a good memory and qualified delight at the prospect of the visit; nor natural quickness of comprehension gave me at did he exaggerate his feelings. Had Mr. Brere- the whist table, was a theme of constant comton thought proper to come like the nabob in mendation with him, and I was also always ready 'Sayings and Doings,' with a rattlesnake, two to hold a conversation with him respecting India." adjutants, and a tribe of parrots and monkeys in his train, he would, I am certain, have been assured by his host, that not only himself but all his suite were decided acquisitions to our domestic circle! My mother was not particularly sorry that my brother had just then settled in London for the purpose of pursuing his medical studies; she had a kind of instinctive feeling that a handsome young man is never likely to prove remarkably acceptable to an invalid elderly gentleman; she relied, however, much on my powers of fascination.

"You have certainly, Olivia,' she observed, 'the ability, in a superior degree, of making yourself agreeable to those whom you wish to please, by adopting their tastes and falling in with their habits; you have hitherto, I am sorry to say, exerted this talent for a wrong purpose. Exert it now for a right one; it would be a source of the greatest consolation to me to reflect that after my death my husband and children would still enjoy all the luxuries to which they have been accustomed, and we are injuring no one by wishing to gain the wealth of Mr. Brereton. In fact, as his only relatives, we seem entitled to a preference over the rest of the world, if we only show ourselves deserving of it.'

"I expressed my thorough conviction of my mother's wisdom, and my readiness to acquiesce in her suggestions, and then retired to my own room, not to prepare ornaments or to practise songs, but to study Hoyle and Capt. Matthews. "Few young ladies are whist players; but my father was fond of the game, and since we had lived in so retired a manner, our principal associates had been a few neighbouring elderly half-pay officers, who were willing to come frequently to make up a rubber, but were not always able to do so without my assistance. I had often lamented the necessity of passing the evening in so wearying an occupation; but I now felt convinced that all had happened most fortunately to accomplish me for the part I had to play in winning the favour of the wealthy nabob, and I went to rest that night to behold in my sleep as many visions of Eastern splendour as would have furnished the locale of a very pretty panorama.

"Mr. Brereton came; but you must not flatter yourself, Janet, that he was so amusing a person as Mr. Danvers in the tale to which I have just alluded. He had no ludicrous peculiarities; 'his guineas were yellow, and so were his

"To be a listener to him, I should rather think, aunt," said Janet. "How could you hold a conversation with him about India when you had never been there?"

"I had been there in books," replied Miss Desmond. "It was my custom to read up' to the subject every morning before the nabob arose; and so apt a student did I prove, that the Ganges became as familiar to me as the Thames, and bungalows, punkahs, and ayahs, were completely household words in my mouth. You have read, Janet, an amusing tale called 'The Man of Two Lives,' where the hero, as he grows up in England, has distinct images gradually conveyed to his mind of scenes witnessed during his former existence in Germany. I might have been supposed at that period to be a lady of two lives, and to have passed the former of them in India. I liked no dishes but curry and mulligatawney soup, and looked with contempt on carriages and horses, sighing for elephants and palanquins. I adopted the practice of retiring regularly for a siesta (taking care, however, to select a book for my companion), and I listened to Mr. Brereton's twenty-times-told tale of a tiger hunt with as much apparent interest as Desdemona could have evinced in listening to the 'hair-breadth 'scapes' of Othello.

"Mr. Brereton went to London for three days. When he returned, he told us that he had been having an interview with an eminent physician, and also with an eminent solicitor : the first candidly told him that his state of health was such as to justify serious apprehensions for the result; the second had received instructions from him to prepare a will, in which, after bequeathing a handsome legacy to my father, he constituted me his sole heiress. The property sounded magnificently in rupees, and translated into English currency, amounted to about a hundred thousand pounds. There is a proverb called 'Let well alone': would that I had been content to practise it!"

"I guess the termination of the affair," said Janet. "Some fair young knight, who loved and who rode away,' allured you into neglect of the nabob, and he visited your transgression with disinheritance.”

"Not so," replied Miss Desmond; "my parents, like you, Janet, thought such an event so probable, that no fair young knight' was permitted to come within sight of our residence, unless, like Parley, the porter, he had peeped

over the hedge. Our doors were only open to married men, and to the three half-pay officers before mentioned, all of whom were elderly; one had a wooden leg, one had lost an eye, and the other was incurably deaf. No, Janet; it was another rock on which my hopes of a legacy were destined to meet with shipwreck. Mr. Brereton, when repeating to us the contents of his will, had said: 'I am happy to be of benefit to Olivia, for I regard her quite as a daughter.' It may seem strange to you that anything in this speech could grate upon my feelings; but, in reality, it was inexpressibly mortifying to me. To be considered by a single man, in the possession of his eyes and senses, as a daughter! Had I been the veriest dowdy in existence, might he not have employed precisely the same expressions concerning me? I was resolved, instead of merely administering to the fancies of his mind and caprices of his temper, to attack the citadel of his heart. I had never yet failed in such an undertaking, and I was anxious to try whether any of my spells had lost their power from long-compelled disuse. I found some difficulty in conveying to the mind of the nabob the impression that I regarded him with anything more than filial tenderness.

wonder? may heaven direct your choice, and bless her who is the enviable object of it.'

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Believe me, Olivia,' he said, my marriage shall never be injurious to you.'

"Do not speak of wealth,' said I, withdrawing my handkerchief; that is the most distant consideration from my thoughts at present.'

"Do you think it probable,' he continued, that any young woman would accept an old, sickly, and irritable man?'

"I deny that you come under any of these denominations,' I replied; 'your temporary indisposition, arising from sudden change of climate, would, I doubt not, soon yield to the affectionate attentions of one who had the privilege of offering such attentions to you without hazarding the comments to which, in this uncharitable world, the warm-hearted and feeling friend is too certain to be exposed.'

"What! Olivia,' said the nabob, taking my hand, have the gossips of the neighbourhood been giving you to me as a wife, because you have been so very kind in your friendly care of me?'

"I cast down my eyes, and endeavoured to look as if I were blushing.

animation than was usual with him, 'I can only "If so,' pursued Mr. Brereton, with more

I repeated the word 'sacrifice!' with a melting, half-chiding intonation, which, had I been an actress (and was I not essentially an actress?), would inevitably have gained me a round of applause from my audience; and just then my father entered, to my very great satisfaction, for I began to see that the scene had gone quite far enough. What, however, was my horror to hear the nabob request my father to indulge him with an immediate private conference. He readily complied, and I remained behind much in the state of mind of a naughty child who has broken or damaged some valuable ornament, and knows that a speedy discovery of its delinquency is inevitable. In about half an hour a servant summoned me to the library; my father was there alone, and walking up and down in evident great discomposure.

"Sir Francis Egerton and Luttrell were young and handsome men; therefore, of course, they saw nothing surprising in the presumed attach-say that they have conferred a very great honour on me, and chosen a very deplorable lot for ment of a young woman for them; but Mr. you. What would you say, dear Olivia, to the Brereton had neither youth, person, nor man- idea of such a sacrifice?' ners calculated to win a lady's heart; and, to do him justice, he was quite free from vanity, and from any disposition to ape the airs and graces of juvenility. I began my attack by an unqualified tirade against the young men of the present day, to any one of whom I signified that I should think it the extreme of misery to be united. I proceeded to speak of my dislike to company, my fondness for the society of a congenial mind, and I declared that I had never known what happiness was till the last few months of my existence. When my generous benefactor spoke of the legacy that he had left me, I burst into tears (or more properly, held up my handkerchief to my eyes) at the mere possibility that I should survive him; and when he entered the room, I was in the habit of starting, sighing, and suddenly recovering myself, overwhelmed with apparent confusion at my unguarded conduct. In a few days my victim evidently showed some symptoms of gratified vanity at the altered description of my attentions towards him; his dress and manners became more youthful, and consequently not half so This unexpected transformation respectable. drew forth the jesting congratulations of one of the half-pay officers. The next morning the nabob said to me: 'Captain Bryant assures me that I am so improved in health and looks, that he expects soon to hear that I am looking out for a young bride.'

"A bride!' I repeated with agitation, at the same time holding up the convenient handkerchief to my eyes. Yet why should I

666

he; is it possible that your insane spirit of co-
"I can scarcely believe my ears, Olivia,' said
quetry has led you to delude Mr. Brereton into
the belief that you would accept his hand were
he to offer it to you?'

faltered on my tongue.
"I attempted to justify myself, but the accents

"It is useless to attempt any explanation,' my father continued. Mr. Brereton, in whose veracity I can confide, has reported to me a conversation which he has just held with you, in which you gave him to understand that it would be a trial to you to see him united to any one but yourself, and also intimated that your attention to him had given rise to uncharitable rumours in the neighbourhood, which last cir

stance, I must take leave to say, only exists in | reclaimed from your destructive spirit of coyour own imagination.'

“Then,' said my father, you hope (as it appears you have been persuading poor Mr. Brereton to do) on very false grounds. Pray what do you suppose his conduct will be when he re-determined by a letter which my father received ceives your refusal ?'