The spell is broken!  Calburt Young does not understand!  He is wise, but I—­I am a woman, and a woman of the world.  But he does not reproach me.  How can he?  I have not allowed him to say a word of love to me.  I have been environed not only with flowers, colored lights, and sweet music, but also with the harmless platitudes of speech.  I whirl away into the dance with Henry Seyhmoor!  I have been boldly flirting,

  =Flirting for Revenue Only=.

Sometimes I am not so successful in this avoidance of exactly what I have skillfully brought out.  Sometimes this policy leads to a proposal.  The tide grows too strong.  The man breaks down the barrier, but what good does it do?  I have maintained a high protective tariff; there is nothing tangible which he can produce against me; there is never any thing which he can say against me; and if I have been ordinarily skillful and cautious there is absolutely nothing for him to think, but “How good she has been to me; how delicately, tenderly, she has tried to avoid giving me pain!”

At the start, my first season out, it was a hard policy to follow, and I would often spend a sleepless hour, after the man had said “good-night!” But those foolish old days have gone, and with them the early freshness of my youth, although the appearance remains.  I have seen so many men promptly revive beneath the showers of another woman’s glance and of another woman’s tender—­perhaps like mine—­unmeant words, mere platitudes, platitudes effectual, intangible.  They are not sufficient proof in any court of conscience, law, or public opinion.  They are the glorious privileges of a woman who is a Private Corporation,

  =Flirting for Revenue Only=.

Robert Fairfield!  There is a magic something in the very name itself.  And the man! ah, after all, old things are best.  My heart never knew a sensation—­the quick, throbbing something which we call love—­until I met him, when hardly more than a school-girl.  It was my first winter!  He was young, attractive, somewhat wild, and quite the fashion that year, and in fact ever since.  He is a dainty love-maker.  He is ready with a hundred delicate little attentions unknown to most men, and highly gratifying to most women.  But after all their influence is limited—­at least with me.  His actual presence is necessary.  Mamma opposed the match—­for we were engaged (never announced) at one time.  She always disliked him, and on that one subject has always been unreasonable.  But she has more influence over me than he has, or ever could have.  She can generally eradicate the dangerous effects of his presence.  This he resented—­and rightly.  I must renounce mother, home, every thing, and come to him, or—­I must cling to him and let all other things go.  He recognized no middle course; I constantly sought one.  I put him off; I made him many promised, and meant them all—­when with him.  Finally he was forbidden the house, and now we barely more than speak.  He is somewhat devoted to a half dozen or more of our best young women, and they are all more or less devoted to him.  The world—–­our little world—­once said we would marry; but the world has decided that it was, mistaken, and that we did not even love one another.  And did we, or not?  In short, do we?