speaking, and Miss Larolles, too happy in talking herself to be
offended at the silence of another, continued her narration.

"Well, but now comes the vilest part of the business; do you know,
when everything else was ready, I could not get my hair-dresser! I
sent all over the town,--he was nowhere to be found; I thought I
should have died with vexation; I assure you I cried so that if I
had not gone in a mask, I should have been ashamed to be seen. And
so, after all this monstrous fatigue, I was forced to have my hair
dressed by my own maid, quite in a common way; was not it cruelly
mortifying?"

"Why yes," answered Cecilia, "I should think it was almost
sufficient to make you regret the illness of the young lady who sent
you her ticket."

They were now interrupted by Mrs Harrel, who advanced to them
followed by a young man of a serious aspect and modest demeanour,
and said, "I am happy to see you both so well engaged; but my
brother has been reproaching me with presenting everybody to Miss
Beverley but himself."

"I cannot hope," said Mr Arnott, "that I have any place in the
recollection of Miss Beverley, but long as I have been absent from
Suffolk, and unfortunate as I was in not seeing her during my last
visit there, I am yet sure, even at this distance of time, grown and
formed as she is, I should instantly have known her."

"Amazing!" cried an elderly gentleman, in a tone of irony, who was
standing near them, "for the face is a very common one!"