Pretty girls, unless they have wise mothers, are more educated by the opposite sex than by their own.  Put them where you will, there is always some man busying himself in their instruction; and the burden of masculine teaching is generally about the same, and might be stereotyped as follows:  “You don’t need to be or do any thing.  Your business in life is to look pretty, and amuse us.  You don’t need to study:  you know all by nature that a woman need to know.  You are, by virtue of being a pretty woman, superior to any thing we can teach you; and we wouldn’t, for the world, have you any thing but what you are.”  When Lillie went to school, this was what her masters whispered in her ear as they did her sums for her, and helped her through her lessons and exercises, and looked into her eyes.  This was what her young gentlemen friends, themselves delving in Latin and Greek and mathematics, told her, when they came to recreate from their severer studies in her smile.  Men are held to account for talking sense.  Pretty women are told that lively nonsense is their best sense.  Now and then, an admirer bolder than the rest ventured to take Lillie’s education more earnestly in hand, and recommended to her just a little reading,—­enough to enable her to carry on conversation, and appear to know something of the ordinary topics discussed in society,—­but informed her, by the by, that there was no sort of need of being either profound or accurate in these matters, as the mistakes of a pretty woman had a grace of their own.

At seventeen, Lillie graduated from Dr. Sibthorpe’s school with a “finished education.”  She had, somehow or other, picked her way through various “ologies” and exercises supposed to be necessary for a well-informed young lady.  She wrote a pretty hand, spoke French with a good accent, and could turn a sentimental note neatly; “and that, my dear,” said Dr. Sibthorpe to his wife, “is all that a woman needs, who so evidently is intended for wife and mother as our little Lillie.”  Dr. Sibthorpe, in fact, had amused himself with a semi-paternal flirtation with his pupil during the whole course of her school exercises, and parted from her with tears in his eyes, greatly to her amusement; for Lillie, after all, estimated his devotion at just about what it was worth.  It amused her to see him make a fool of himself.

Of course, the next thing was—­to be married; and Lillie’s life now became a round of dressing, dancing, going to watering-places, travelling, and in other ways seeking the fulfilment of her destiny.

She had precisely the accessible, easy softness of manner that leads every man to believe that he may prove a favorite, and her run of offers became quite a source of amusement.  Her arrival at watering-places was noted in initials in the papers; her dress on every public occasion was described; and, as acknowledged queen of love and beauty, she had everywhere her little court of men and women flatterers.  The women flatterers around a belle are as much a part of the cortege as the men.  They repeat the compliments they hear, and burn incense in the virgin’s bower at hours when the profaner sex may not enter.