proud of it, and glad to have all know of it.  Of course this was just what I wanted, for he was not a susceptible man.  He had not been in love for years.  His declarations meant something, and people knew it.  Thus was I brought into notice.  “Who, pray, is this Mary Lee Manley?” they began to ask.  “Is she the same scrawny, ugly girl who was such a flat failure in society two years ago?” “What has she done to herself?  She is certainly not a beauty but she has improved, just how we are unable to say.”

The men began to find me, hunted me up, and were unable to realize that I was that self same individual whom they had so diligently avoided her first season out.  All the while my affair went on, systematically artistic, with that Social Drifter.  No man will ever love me again as I was loved by that man.  I wantonly played with his openly avowed affections.  I was deliberate, artistic.  I was cold.  I led him on blindly.  I calculated every move with mathematical accuracy.  I left nothing undone.  I skillfully covered my tracks.  I always told him sadly, gently, that I did not love him, and that I never could.  Yet I told him in such a manner that, almost breathless with a new hope, he refused to believe me, refused to listen.  He was always considerate and I hated him for his consideration.  He was always thoughtful, unselfish, and alas, always loving.  Finally, after I had successfully played him for all that he was worth—­which was a great deal to me—­I told him to go.  I dismissed him with scorn and without reason.  Of course there had been no love in my heart for this man, but his delicate attentions were always intensely flattering.  And once, just once, I might have yielded, but my family, my own judgment, every thing, was against the man, and to the end he continued to be simply a trial for my untried and newly discovered powers.  And then, perhaps the more potent reason of all, Gerome Meadows gave uneasy indications of a desire to return.  I, and immediately, made arrangements for the full gratification of his desire.  Now was my chance.  Revenge, when delayed, is all the sweeter for the delay.  The world must know of my power, and through Gerome Meadows!  I had waited long and patiently, but I had not wasted my time.  I had gone through a severe social training, and with the best results.  I was an accomplished flirt, but I was not trammeled by the always dangerous reputation—­it was not known.  It was simply a rumor about town that I might be somewhat of a trifler, but it had not been affirmed, and few believed the idle, unauthorized rumor; it had not even reached the ears of Gerome Meadows.  He had hotly quarreled with his devilish, brown-eyed beauty.  She had dismissed him after a highly tragic scene.  The details were highly sensational—­as told by her devoted partizans, and warmly denied by his and his outraged family (principally irate mother).  They sound like the fragments of a romance written by Bulwer, and with a liberal