sixteen

You will return after three or four years with a Russian princess for a bride, and no one will think more of what occurred yesterday than if it had happened sixteen years ago.”

“Yes, my youngest is not sixteen.

Her character will be fixed; and she will, at sixteen, be the most determined flirt that ever made herself and her family ridiculous;--a flirt, too, in the worst and meanest degree of flirtation; without any attraction beyond youth and a tolerable person; and, from the ignorance and emptiness of her mind, wholly unable to ward off any portion of that universal contempt which her rage for admiration will excite.

On the staircase they met a beautiful girl of sixteen or seventeen, who looked with anxiety at the stranger.