"Why, I suppose I should not say _in love_; there's some other way of
expressing it come into fashion since my time, no doubt. And even then,
I know that was not to be said of a young lady, till signing and sealing
day; but it popped out, and I can't get it back again, so you must even
let it pass. And what harm? for you know, madam, without love, what
would become of the world?--though I was jilted once and away, I
acknowledge--but forgive and forget. I don't like the girl a whit the
worse for being a little bit tender-hearted. For I'm morally certain,
even from the little I have heard her say, and from the way she has been
brought up, and from her being her father's daughter, and her mother's,
madam, she could not fix her affections on any one that would not do
honour to her choice, or--which is only saying the same thing in other
words--that you and I should not approve."

"Ah! there's the thing!" said Mrs. Beaumont, sighing.

"Why now I took it into my head from a blush I saw this morning, though
how I came to notice it, I don't know; for to my recollection I have not
noticed a girl's blushing before these twenty years--but, to be sure,
here I have as near an interest, almost, as if she were my own
daughter--I say, from the blush I saw this morning, when young Beaumont
was talking of the gallop he had taken to inquire about Captain
Walsingham, I took it into my head that he was the happy man."

"Oh! my dear sir, he never made any proposals for Amelia." That
was strictly true. "Nor, I am sure, ever thought of it, as far as
ever I heard."

The saving clause of "_as far as ever I heard_," prevented this last
assertion from coming under that description of falsehoods denominated