"What a dreadful sacrifice!" exclaimed Lady Marchmont, with mock-tragedy air—"though, as Chloe would say, it was devoted to the noblest duty of humanity."
"It is a pity, Lady Mary, that Pope now 'disdains the shrine he once adored,'" said Lord Harvey, "or what a subject you might suggest to him in the locks of the modern Berenice. But I believe 'Sappho's eye, quick glancing round the park,' has lost its ancient influence."
"I am glad to find," retorted her ladyship, annoyed at his allusion to lines any thing but complimentary, and too well known to need more than allusion,—"I am glad to find that Lord Harvey has, at length, found a virtue to suit him," retorted Lady Mary; "there is candour, at least, in borrowing from the wit of others, it frankly admits that we have none of our own."
"It is, then, a virtue," said Lady Marchmont, good-naturedly, "that we are all likely to practise in your presence. But I go a step beyond: I candidly admit, instead of
