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sentiment and more feeling, suppresses a sigh when he remembers that the very fact of calling this peerless being his own, deprives him of the happiness of enjoying her society, even of offering her any of the little courtesies which she receives from others with such winning affability, and rewards with such enchanting looks and words. But he would not have his best friend divine that puerile regret for the universe! Fashion, the bête noire of his imagination, would point her finger and laugh at him! Unendurable calamity!

It is generally admitted that Melinda, as Mrs. Belmont, is far more attractive to gentlemen than she had been as a young girl, more fascinating than any young girl can hope to be! Yet, be it understood, that she is never guilty of an imprudence that will risk her reputation, or furnish tempting food for scandal. The disease that gnaws, vulture-like, at her heart, is an insatiable craving for adulation, an unappeasable hunger that would make her barter her birthright of womanhood for Flattery's mess of pottage.

She would turn with righteous horror from a hapless sister who had lapsed from purity, who bore upon her bowed forehead the brand of shame, upon her pale cheeks the furrows worn by penitential tears. Melinda would draw aside her silken garments from the touch of such pollution. She would never suspect that the heart which beat beneath her velvet bodice was full of sin as foul, of