"Well, dearest Viola," I exclaimed, "have you enjoyed yourself?" "Oh, yes!" she said, languidly, "it was very pleasant, I suppose." "You suppose! why, did you not dance ?" Yes, yes! the whole evening. I am knocked up." "But who were your partners ?" I asked eagerly. "Oh! don't, dear cousin Dorothy, be so merciless as to expect a catalogue raisonnée at this time of night, or rather morning; it would be an endless beadroll." Well, but dear Viola, at least tell me, if there were not one among your partners whom you liked better than another; if you had any agreeable conversation ?" No," she replied, "unless you reckon as such sundry meteorological observations on the density and rarity of the atmosphere-the assurance that it had rained all day, and the confident prediction that it would be fine to-morrow. Then, to be sure, I was edified by an anatomical dissertation on the physical powers of the première danseuse, which I think might qualify me to pass my examination at the College of Surgeons. I believe this is all I heard; so good night, dear Cousin Dorothy. I am tired-I mean, I am weary. There is a vast difference between being weary and tired, but it is too late to be analytical. Good night! we will discuss it all to-morrow.' How The morrow came, and with it Mrs. Sidney. different to her daughter's was her account of the evening's amusement. She was in high spirits. It appeared that Viola's début had been most triumphant. Mammas had looked apprehensive, their daughters splenetic and spiteful, elderly gentlemen had stared her out of countenance, and the young men, after casting a side-long glance at the adjoining mirror, giving an invigorating pull at their collars, and a 66 refreshing, although almost imperceptible twirl to their ambrosial locks, had crowded round her to hope against hope," that she would take pity on them for the twelfth, thirteenth, or fourteenth dance. Could a début have been made under brighter auspices? And yet I said in answer to Mrs. Sidney's glowing description, "I don't think Viola was much gratified by the sensation she appears to have ex cited ?" "Oh, really!" replied Mrs. Sidney, with some small degree of irritation. "I don't pretend to understand Viola; she is so foolishly romantic. I cannot think where she has acquired those absurd ideas. I do believe she must have ransacked the circulating libraries for all the maudlin, flimsy stuff that ought to fall dead from the press." "Viola's romance is scarcely modelled after the pattern of a heroine of the Rosa Matilda school ;' " I ventured to say. "I don't know; I wish Viola would talk a little more to me. I am sure it is the wish of my heart that my children should make me their confidant." Poor Mrs. Sidney! How many mothers have said, do say, and I fear will say, the same thing until the end of time! And yet no mother can have the confidence of her children who does not, in their nursery and school-days, enter into all their pursuits and amusements-who does not listen to their communications with a lively interest, sympathizing with their sorrows, and making their joys her own. She need not then fear that the nurse or the governess will supplant her in the affections of her children. No nurse, no governess ever does this. It is the mother alone who can thus cramp her intellect, and dwarf her comprehension; all else will tire of the tedious narrative of lisping infancy, or the vapid confidence of girlhood. She too, will be careful not to quench that confidence by the inopportune lecture or sharp rebuke. Few are aware of the chilling blight, the drear opaqueness, and desolation of feeling which have at such times fallen on a young girl's heart; when, in the full gush of confiding love and boundless trust, she has asked for sympathy and succour where nature whispered she might not plead in vain; she yet has found her confidence repelled-her trust betrayed. How often, from that moment, has she gone on her way a solitary being, in silence and in loneliness, letting her feelings prey on themselves; and, like the cankerworm in the bud, blighting and blasting their own freshness ere they come to maturity. Still less will the mother who is really desirous of identifying herself with her daughter's cherished plans and secret thoughts, whisper what she may consider her little girl's bright sally, or childish, yet heart-fraught eloquence to the first chance visitant who may " drop in." I have seen many a child, infant though she were, blush crimson at the recital. It at once destroys the sacred feeling of unreserve that ought to subsist between parent and child. Lastly, she will not (as was Mrs. Sidney's practice) reveal every petty domestic detail or casual observation to her husband. Girls will confide a thousand trifling circumstances to their mothers, with which they would not for worlds their fathers should be acquainted: they have an instinctive feeling that the latter cannot comprehend them. But to return to our conversation. Mrs. Sidney mused awhile, and then said, "Cousin Dorothy, I have been thinking that among all that crowd of young men we met last night, there was not one whom I should have selected as a husband for Viola. You see, with my daughter's peculiar disposition I am most anxious that she should not form an attachment which her father and I could not at once approve. If Viola falls in love, it will not be a girl's light caprice or evanescent preference." 6 "You are right there," I replied, with energy; "it would influence her whole future life. A disappointment to her would indeed prove the wreck of her happiness." I felt my eyes fill with tears as I spoke. "And yet," continued Mrs. Sidney, "who were her partners? A tribe of barristers, who never are, but always to be rich;' sons of merchants, too proud to enter their father's counting-houses, and idling and lounging about town the live-long day; starveling curates, whose poverty and not their will consents' to their remaining single; besides a sufficient quantity of those helots of the human race, younger sons of younger brothers. Would any of these do for my daughter ?" "Ah! but," I said (and it was an original observation on my part), "riches do not constitute happi ness.' True, cousin Dorothy; but there must be a competency.' Ah! that same word competency, thought I, who shall define it? It would defy the analytical powers of a Tooke, a Johnson, or a Lowth. It may mean four hundred, it may mean four thousand, it may even, by a slight stretch of arithmetical ingenuity, be magnified into fourteen thousand * per annum. Mr. Hume, Miss Martineau, the calculating boy himself, would be puzzled under what row of figures to class it. In Mrs. Sidney's view of the subject, I think it meant a fine house, fine plate, fine servants, fine horses, and as many other fine things as could be conveniently foisted in. "Viola has been all her life accustomed to luxuries, and she cannot do without them; she must not marry a poor man;" argued Mrs. Sidney with herself, for I never ventured to contradict her, although I thought then, as I had often thought before, how little she *This is clearly an interpolation; and indeed the ink is paler here than elsewhere.-ED. appreciated or understood her daughter. "Besides," added Mrs. Sidney, "how people would talk if Viola were not to make a good match!" and with this logical, all-powerful, all-convincing peroration, Mrs. Sidney left the apartment. CHAPTER VI. Now the first question fathers ask, RITSON'S ENGLISH SONGS. Une femme insensible est celle qui n'a pas encore vu celui qu' elle doit aimer.-LA BRUYERE. WITH all my pride in Viola (and it was not a little), I thought that her future destiny would be similar to that of many another, as gifted and as lovely as herself. I thought that, as offer after offer was rejected by her ambitious parents, her youth would pass, her beauty fade, her attractions fleet away, until the option of refusing or accepting would be no longer left to her. As yet, no harm was done, unless indeed to the disappointed suitors, not one of whom I ever heard of as coming to an untimely end: they all kept their wits (I mean, of course, such of them as had any wits to keep) and attained a most tormenting longevity; for I kept them in my eye, as, being an old maid myself, I had an intense sympathy with unfortunate lovers. When last I heard of them, their united ages (to borrow the language of the news-writers when, the twaddle of the house being at a discount, they have recourse to the twaddle of the provinces) amounted to one thousand and ten years. Viola "passed on in D |