How many shipwrecks close to port; how many races lost by a head, how many games by a point, she must have known before her silver laugh became so hollow, and her pleasant smile so evidently theatrical and lip-deep; before what once was chanceful became desperate, and she fell back into the ranks of the forlorn hope—­of the “Lost Children!”

On one of these occasions I met her.  She was just beginning her condottiere life then, and was very attractive even to those on whom she had no designs—­believed in balls, and had an ingenious talent for original composition.  I don’t think those entertainments are dangerously exciting to her now; and Heaven forefend that she should write poetry!  One shudders to think of what it would he.  Well, she was returning to the house after a moonlight flirtation (if you can call it so when it was all on one side).  She had been trying to fascinate a stupid, sullen, commercial Orson—­a boy not clever, but cunning, who calculated on his share in the bank as a means of procuring him these amusements, as other men might reckon on their good looks or soft tongue.  He had just left her, and I was wishing her good-night under the porch.  She forgot her cue for a moment, and became natural.  “I feel so very, very tired,” she said.  I remember how drearily she said it, and how the tears glittered in her weary eyes.  I remember, too, how, ten minutes later, I heard that amiable youth boasting of what had happened, and giving a hideous travestie of her attempts to captivate him, till at last my wrath was kindled, and, to his great confusion (for he was of a timid disposition), I spoke, and sharply, with my tongue.

Ah me!  I mind the time when men used to waylay Fanny Singleton in the cloak-room, and shoot her flying as she went up the staircase, in their anxiety to secure her for a partner; and now she is a refuge for the destitute, except when some one, for old acquaintance’ sake, takes a turn with one of the best waltzers in Europe.

I like her for one thing—­she has never tried the girlish dodge on yet.  She has never been heard to say, “Mamma always calls me a wild thing.”  It is better that she should be bitter and sardonic, as she is sometimes, than that.  Mars herself could hardly play the ingenues when in mature age.  Grisi’s best part now is not Amina.

The last thing I heard of Fanny was that she was about to unite herself (the active voice is the proper one) to a very Low-Church clergyman, a distinguished member of the Evangelical Alliance, pregnant with the odor of sanctity—­bouquet de Baptiste treble distilled.  I dare say they will get on well enough.  If the holy man wants to collect “experiences,” his wife will be able to furnish them, that’s certain.  It will be very “sweet.”

I pity, but I condemn.  In the name of Matuta and of common sense, is there an imperative necessity that all our maids should become matrons?