"Was Mr. Hatfield at the ball?"
"Yes to be sure. Did you think he was too good to go?"
"I thought he might consider it unclerical."
"By no means. He did not profane his cloth by dancing; but it was with difficulty he could refrain poor man: he looked as if he were dying to ask my hand just for one set; and—Oh! by the by—he's got a new curate...that seedy old fellow Mr. Bligh has got his long-wished-for living at last, and gone."
"And what is the new one like?"
"Oh such a beast! Weston his name is. I I can give you his description in three words. . .an insensate, ugly, stupid blockhead. That's four, but no matter. . .enough of him now."
Then she returned to the ball, and gave me a further account of her deportment there, and at the several parties she had since attended, and further particulars respecting Sir Thomas Ashby and Messrs. Meltham, Green, and Hatfield, and the ineffaceable impression she had wrought upon each of them.
"Well, which of the four do you like
