a stranger, that, I doubt not, she may find it almost as difficult to get out as if she were an unmarried woman."

The good-natured Horatio could hardly have urged a worse argument to interest his Amelia. Besides her objection to being seen in public with a person so utterly unknown to fame as Mrs. Birkit, she had a dislike to her, which she would hardly own to herself, as having once been an object of attention to Horatio; for Amelia, though she certainly was far from loving him to the degree she professed to do, had that symptom of the passion, excessive jealousy.

"Do as you please, my dear," Somerville resumed; " but I cannot help thinking you are precipitate."

Why, what possible objection can there be to them?" asked Amelia, pettishly.

"None that I know of," replied Somerville; "but time will shew."

The Miss Tornados did not call to re

turn Amelia's informal visit till the morn ing of the day Mrs. Somerville was to take them to the play. At the sight of their elegant equipage, Mrs. Somerville's heart triumphed in her superior penetration; for the Birkits had a carriage indeed, and one very fit to drag them through brambles and briars, along nine miles of miry road in the country, but no more to be compared to the varnished pannels of Mr. Tornado, than a seventy-four gun to an invalid steam-packet. The dress of the two young ladies was suited to their equipage, and in the highest style of expence and fashion; their air and manner corresponded with both. But when Mrs. Somerville came to survey the persons of her beautiful coheiresses, she shrunk aghast with astonishment and dismay; for the faces that peeped from beneath very elegant white satin hats and white ostrich feathers were black!

T

Mrs. Tornado had made no compact relative to the colour of her amiable sisters;

and

and Amelia, in her haste to form the acquaintance, had omitted to notice the little word half, used in naming Mr. Tornado as their brother; for the mother of the young ladies was a native of Africa.

Had Julia been capable of a particle of the malice Amelia ascribed to her, she would now have had a complete triumph, in the discomfiture of her sister-in-law's worldly-minded policy; but, on the contrary, she exerted herself to make the visit pass off less dreadfully, and to conceal Amelia's dismay from the fair objects of it. This was the more easily managed, as the ladies had too high a conceit of themselves to ascribe any thing in Mrs. Somerville's manner to the real cause. They laughed, admired themselves, and chatted with unceasing volubility; and at length took leave, with an often-repeated promise to be with her in very good time in the evening.

Now was the moment that Amelia's fortitude entirely forsook her. On Julia's

bosom she shed a torrent of tears; and clinging, in her distress, to the being she had almost spurned before" No, never," she exclaimed, "will I submit to the horror of being seen in public with those creatures on each side for supporters! If you knew, my dear Miss Somerville, my antipathy-my horror of blacks

"But they are not quite blacks, dear Mrs. Somerville."

"The next thing to it. That eldest one, Mariamne-did you look at the shape and size of her great hand?"

"I was admiring the beautiful whiteness of yours within it, as she took it at parting, with the eagerness of a sudden fancy,"

66

Fancy! I'll tell you what, Miss Somerville, if you can't devise some means to get me off this odious party, I shall never survive it;" and again she had recourse to her smelling-bottle.

Julia knew not what to say. It was in vain to talk reason to Amelia, and tell her

she

she ought to have imagined some excuse while the young ladies were with her. When Horatio was told of her distress, he, less forbearing (perhaps only because conscious he loved her far better than Julia' did), rallied her apprehensions, and remarked-"This was worse even than appearing in public with a country cousin."

In fruitless altercations, in sighs and tears, on the part of Amelia, the time was spent till the hour arrived for departure. The Miss Tornados were but too punctual. Glittering in robes and turbans of gold and silver muslin, they glided into the room. The fiery eye of Mariamne flashed with pleasure as she took a survey of her person in the ample pier-glass; but she could not help noticing the alteration in Mrs. Somerville, to whom she had taken, as Julia observed, a violent fancy.

The carriage drew up. Determined to make a heroic effort, Amelia led the way, secretly resolving to keep, as much as possible, out of view of her acquaintance, and