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 whispering; and as she had of late become a little deaf, greater efforts were necessary: so that, next to the acidity which we have before remarked, the chief expression of her visage was the straining of curiosity not altogether gratified.—The young one, though not much sweeter than the other in the natural cast of her visage, tried to make up that deficiency by industry, and where a young man to her mind made his appearance, she smiled, and simpered, and lisped, but all could not conceal the groundwork. On these occasions she succeeded no better than children who, attempting to lessen the bitterness of the apothecary's potions by lumps of sugar, only make the dose more mawkish and loathsome.

This mother and daughter (for so they were) were hardly seated, when Hamilton and his mistress rose to dance a minuet.