most particularly. It raises my
spleen more than anything, to have the pretence of being asked, of
being given a choice, and at the same time addressed in such a way as
to oblige one to do the very thing, whatever it be! If I had not luckily
thought of standing up with you I could not have got out of it. It is
a great deal too bad. But when my aunt has got a fancy in her head,
nothing can stop her."

CHAPTER XIII

The Honourable John Yates, this new friend, had not much to recommend
him beyond habits of fashion and expense, and being the younger son of
a lord with a tolerable independence; and Sir Thomas would probably
have thought his introduction at Mansfield by no means desirable. Mr.
Bertram's acquaintance with him had begun at Weymouth, where they had
spent ten days together in the same society, and the friendship, if
friendship it might be called, had been proved and perfected by Mr.
Yates's being invited to take Mansfield in his way, whenever he could,
and by his promising to come; and he did come rather earlier than had
been expected, in consequence of the sudden breaking-up of a large party
assembled for gaiety at the house of another friend, which he had left
Weymouth to join. He came on the wings of disappointment, and with his
head full of acting, for it had been a theatrical party; and the play
in which he had borne a part was within two days of representation,
when the sudden death of one of the nearest connexions of the family
had destroyed the scheme and dispersed the performers. To be so near
happiness, so near fame, so near the long paragraph in praise of the
private theatricals at Ecclesford, the seat of the Right Hon. Lord
Ravenshaw, in Cornwall, which would of course have immortalised the
whole party for at least a twelvemonth! and being so near, to lose
it all, was an injury to be keenly felt, and Mr. Yates could talk of
nothing else. Ecclesford and its theatre, with its arrangements and
dresses, rehearsals and jokes, was his never-failing subject, and to
boast of the past his only consolation.

Happily for him, a love of the theatre is so general, an itch for acting
so strong among young people, that he could hardly out-talk the interest
of his hearers. From the first casting of the parts to the epilogue it
was all bewitching, and there were few who did not wish to have been a
party concerned, or would have hesitated to try their skill. The play
had been Lovers' Vows, and Mr. Yates was to h