Note 08 — Chapter I · THE REFLECTIONS OF A YOUNG LADY ON GOING OUT INTO THE WORLD.

Mrs H. I see, miss, that, like other romancical young ladies, you cherish the notion that you would prefer to lead a single life. I don’t fancy you would remain long in that mind in Britain—since we en’t Papists, and if I may say so to your face, you are reasonable well-looking—but in India such a resolution could not hold for a single day. When you have seen, as I have, the numerous crowds of gentlemen in respectable, if not in affluent circumstances, that will hasten to the Gott[08] to see the European ladies disembark, and rush to hand you out of your palanqueen and into church on Sunday, you will perceive that no woman could be so cruel as to keep so many worthy persons pining in suspense. I have known a young lady—and she not a creature of any figure—who was married, within two hours of her landing, to a gentleman she had never seen before.