What
solid friendships and satisfactions then is Profusiana excluded from!
"Her name indeed is written in every public window, and prostituted,
as I may call it, at the pleasure of every profligate or sot, who
wears a diamond to engrave it: and that it may be, with most vile and
barbarous imputations and freedoms of words, added by rakes, who very
probably never exchanged a syllable with her. The wounded trees are
perhaps also taught to wear the initials of her name, linked, not
unlikely, and widening as they grow, with those of a scoundrel. But
all this while she makes not the least impression upon one noble
heart: and at last, perhaps, having run on to the end of an
uninterrupted race of follies, she is cheated into the arms of some
vile fortune-hunter; who quickly lavishes away the remains of that
fortune which her extravagance had left; and then, after the worst
usage, abandoning her with contempt, she sinks into an obscurity that
cuts short the thread of her life, and leaves no remembrance, but on
the brittle glass, and still more faithless bark, that ever she had a
being."
"Alas, alas! what a butterfly of a day," said Miss (an expression she
remembered of Lady Towers), "was poor Profusiana!--What a sad thing
to be so dazzled by worldly grandeur, and to have so many admirers,
and not one real friend!"
"Very true, my dear; and how carefully ought a person of a gay and
lively temper to watch over it I And what a rock may public places be
to a lady's reputation, if she be not doubly vigilant in her conduct,
when she is exposed to the censures and observations of malignant
crowds of people; many of the worst of whom spare the least those who
are most unlike themselves.
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