It was a wholesome lesson to my morbid discontent and pride to hear what trials she had surmounted already, and how many more she was ready to encounter.

She had once been engaged to a very brilliant young man, she told me, but he was dissipated and careless of her feelings, and she let him go; since that he had drifted fast to destruction, and sometimes she reproached herself for not having held to him through thick and thin.  It was just possible she might have saved him, she thought, but her friends had persuaded her that he would only drag her down, and so she broke with him forever.

“Did he love you?” I asked, eagerly.  “Were you sure that he was not perfidious?”

“Oh, I believe he was true to me—­however false to himself.”

“Then you were wrong,” I said.  “Wrong, believe me.  Carry Grey!  A woman should bear every thing but infidelity of heart for the man she loves—­every thing!”

“I am sorry to hear you say so,” she replied, somewhat coldly.  “There is a great deal more than blind affection needful for a woman’s happiness, Miss Monfort—­so experience tells us.  What I mean is, perhaps he might have reformed had I not broken with him; but it was the merest chance—­one too feeble to depend on; and I did wisely to discard him, I am convinced.”

“Forgive me!  I did not mean to censure you,” I said; “I was only speaking generally—­too generally, perhaps, for individual courtesy.  This is a theory of mine which as yet I have had no opportunity to put in practice, for I have never been attached to a dissipated man.”  I smiled.  “I dare say I too should drop such a man like a pestilence.”

“I hope so.  But the best way is to avoid all intimacy with such men from the first.  You are very young.  Let me give you my advice on this subject before you form any attachment:  keep your affections for a worthy object, if you keep them locked up forever.  Better be alone than mismated.”

“This is to shut the cage after the bird has flown,” I thought, sadly; but I thanked her, and promised to profit by her good counsel.

We were fast friends ever after, and, when she went away to her distant Western home, Carry Ormsby bore some memorials of her summer friend away with her, in the shape of books, plate, and jewels, such as her simple means could have ill afforded.  I felt that I could not have devised any means more sure to gratify her worthy uncle, to whom such gifts had been dross.  He was a widower—­the father of sons—­indifferent to show, and, besides that, unwilling to incur obligations from any one, such as gifts entail on some minds.

There are persons made to give and others to receive, and neither can do the work of the other gracefully.  He and I were both of the same order, so we accorded perfectly.