How truly amiable is an unblemished character, and how contemptible is the reverse! Servants naturally love and respect virtue in those they live with, and seldom or ever either flatter or conceal the vices they do not greatly profit by. The airs Lady Mellasin gave herself on this occasion, were so far from making them believe her innocent, or their master blameable, that, as soon as they had gone out of her sight, they only turned her pride, and the fall it was going to sustain, into ridicule and grimace.
Miss Betsy, however, could not see them depart in this manner, without feeling a very deep concern: their misfortunes obliterated all the resentment she had at any time conceived against them; and she had never before been more angry, even with Miss Flora, for the treachery she had been guilty of to her, than she was now grieved at the sight of her humiliation.
She was sitting alone, and full of very serious reflections on this sudden change in the family, when her brother Thoughtless came in: she was glad of the opportunity of sounding his inclinations as to her living with him, and now resolved to do it effectually: she began with telling him the whole story of Lady Mellasin's and Miss Flora's removal; and then complained how dully she should pass the time with only Mr. Goodman, and an old gentlewoman who was to come to be his housekeeper. 'I thought you were about marrying,' said he; 'and expected, from what Mr. Goodman wrote to me, that my first compliment to you, on my arrival, would have been to have wished you joy.--You are not broke off with the gentleman, are you?'
The careless air with which he spoke these words, stung Miss Betsy to the quick; she took no notice, however, how much she was piqued at them, but replied, that the whole affair was mere suggestion; that it was true, indeed, she had for some time received the addresses of a gentleman recommended by her brother Frank; that he, and some other of her friends, were very much for the match, and she supposed had spoke of it as a thing concluded on, because they wished it to be so: but, for her own part, she never had as yet entertained one serious thought about the matter; and, at present, was far from having any disposition to become a wife; 'So that,' continued she, 'if I am doomed to stay in Mr. Goodman's house, till I am relieved that way, it is very probable I may be moped to death, and married to my grave.'