Page:The Cottagers of Glenburnie - Hamilton (1808).djvu/317

 day; and from the delight with which she dwelt on the compliments paid to her beauty by men of superior rank, I had no suspicion of Mollins being all the time a favoured lover. Nor do I believe he would have proved so at the last, had any of the lords she danced with stepped forward as declared admirers. But alas, they one by one took leave; and in ten days after the last of the races, their own party was the only one that remained in Edinburgh. It was then that Bell, for the first time, communicated to me an account of the embarrassment in which she had involved herself, by contracting debts for articles of dress, which she said it was absolutely impossible to do without; and which, by Mrs Flinders's advice, she had taken from the most fashionable milliner and mantua-maker in town. Mrs Flinders, indeed, told her, that genteel people never paid in ready money, and that many young ladies never paid their bills at all, or entertained a thought of paying them, till