courtship, yet she had no serious love made to her till she was between
sixteen and seventeen, when she accompanied her aunt to Scarborough: she
was there very assiduously followed by a gentleman reputed of a large
fortune in Wales. He was gay and well-bred, his person moderately
agreeable, his understanding specious and his manner insinuating. There
was nothing very engaging in the man, except the appearance of a very
tender attachment. She had before found great pleasure in being admired;
but her vanity was still more flattered in being loved: she knew herself
capable of amusing; but till now had never been able to give either
pleasure or pain, according to her sovereign decree. She grew partial to
Mr Lenman (that was the name of her lover) because he raised her
consequence in her own eyes: she played off a thousand airs of coquetry
which she had never yet had an opportunity to exercise for want of a
real lover. Sometimes she would elate him by encouragement; at others,
freeze him into despair by her affected coldness: she was never two
hours the same, because she delighted in seeing the variety of passions
she could excite.

Mr Lenman was certainly sufficiently tormented; but so great a
proficiency in coquetry at so early an age was no discouragement to his
hopes. There are no people so often the dupe of their own arts as
coquettes; especially when they become so very early in life;
therefore, instead of being damped in his pursuit, he adapted his
behaviour to her foible, vanity, and by assuming an air of indifference,
could, when he pleased, put an end to her affected reserve; though he
was not so impolite a lover as quite to deny her the gratification she
expected from her little arts. He found means, however, to command her
attention by the very serious proposal of matrimony. She had no great
inclination for the state, but the novelty pleased her. The pleasure she
received from his addresses she mistook for love, and imagined herself
deeply enamoured, when she was in reality only extremely flattered; the
common error of her age. In the company she had kept matrimony appeared
in no very formidable light; she did not see that it abridged a woman of
any of the liberties she already enjoyed; it only afforded her an
opportunity of choosing her own diversions; whereas her taste in those
points sometimes differed from her aunt's, to whom, however, she was
obliged to submit. Thus prepossessed, both in favour of her lover