If Miss Rebecca can get the better of him, and at her first entrance into life, she is a young person of no ordinary cleverness.
 William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair (1847). copy citation

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Author William Makepeace Thackeray
Source Vanity Fair
Topic cleverness life
Date 1847
Language English
Reference
Note
Weblink https://www.gutenberg.org/files/599/599-h/599-h.htm

Context

“When dressed at length, in the afternoon, he would issue forth to take a drive with nobody in the Park; and then would come back in order to dress again and go and dine with nobody at the Piazza Coffee-House. He was as vain as a girl; and perhaps his extreme shyness was one of the results of his extreme vanity. If Miss Rebecca can get the better of him, and at her first entrance into life, she is a young person of no ordinary cleverness. The first move showed considerable skill. When she called Sedley a very handsome man, she knew that Amelia would tell her mother, who would probably tell Joseph, or who, at any rate, would be pleased by the compliment paid to her son.” source