Page:Dramas 3.pdf/399

Rh

woman, who has entered into her thirty-second year, to do with matrimonial plans?

When the spirit and bloom of five-and-twenty brighten a lady's countenance, I never think of her age.—Well then, matrimony has nothing to do with it?

No, nothing at all: my house, that is to say, if I do take the lease, will be a cheerful spinster's house, where literati will assemble, amateurs sit in council, curiosities be examined, poems read, and all the bon-mots of the town be repeated; if I can induce the learned and refined to honour with their society such a humble individual as myself.

What delightful intercourse!—with not one word of scandal required to give it zest.

Not one word.

And this charming arrangement is determined upon?

Absolutely.