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The Coquette.

maidenly confusion, the stifled breath that with this strange, new joy, should choke her utterance, or turn her words into sobs? True, a flush is on her cheek, but it is the exultant flag uplifted at victory. The snowy lid falls over the eye, but it is to hide the glance of triumph. The voice has a faltering cadence, but it is not the accent of womanly agitation.

Amanda feigns a most charming surprise at this unexpected declaration, she murmurs some incoherent platitudes about friendship, chides herself for the hardness of her heart, and is zealous, with honied words, to pluck out the sting from her rejection, that she may not wholly lose one of her train. Thus, year after year, she plays her game, with consummate tact and unflagging spirit, and daily counts the hearts she has won, as religiously as a devotee tells the beads of her rosary.

Strange to say, the French bullion of Amanda's attractions has brighter glitter than the true gold of purer graces, and she holds her empire longer than many a lovelier, worthier contemporary. Two or three generations of lesser belles fade around her before Time lays a destroying finger on her meretricious charms. Even he, the remorseless, is kept at bay by her witchcraft.

But, in the end, the law of compensation will not suffer violence. We dare to predict that the retribution of one of two, equally deplorable, fates, is awaiting the conquering Amanda. Either she

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