"So then," said she, "Mr. Godfrey Percy is like all the rest of his sex,
and I must not expect to hear the truth from him."--She paused--and looked
at a print which he was examining.--"I would, however, rather have him
speak severely than think hardly of me."

"He has no right to speak, and certainly no inclination to think hardly of
Miss Hauton," replied Godfrey gravely, but with an emotion which he in vain
endeavoured to suppress. To change the conversation, he asked her opinion
about a figure in the print. She took out her glass, and stooped to look
quite closely at it.--"Before you utterly condemn me," continued she,
speaking in a low voice, "consider how fashion silences one's better taste
and feelings, and how difficult it is when all around one--"

Miss Chatterton, Miss Drakelow, and some officers of their suite came up at
this instant; a deputation, they said, to bring Miss Hauton back, to favour
them with another song, as she must now have recovered her voice.

"No--no--excuse me," said she, smiling languidly; "I beg not to be pressed
any more. I am really not well--I absolutely cannot sing any more this
morning. I have already sung so much--_too much_," added she, when the
deputation had retired, so that the last words could be heard only by him
for whom they were intended.

Though Miss Hauton's apologizing thus for her conduct, and making a
young gentleman, with whom she was but just acquainted, the judge of her
actions, might be deemed a still farther proof of her indiscretion, yet
the condescension was so flattering, and it appeared such an instance of
ingenuous disposition, that Godfrey was sensibly touched by it. He followed
the fair Maria to her ottoman, from which she banished Pompey the Great, to