“Louis! I should think not!” said Mrs. Gaston, warmly. “My dear, you don’t know Louis yet--perhaps you never will. Very few people besides Edward and I know what that boy is. I know him, through and through, and I unhesitatingly declare that he’s an angel. I believe he’s of a different grain from other men. Mrs. Vere could no more ensnare him than she could put shackles on a mist-cloud; and for that reason--because she knows her usual darts are powerless with him--she is feverishly anxious to get him in her toils. I’ll do her the justice to say her efforts have been masterly. She’s left no stone unturned. She’s tried the musical dodge, and invited him to warble duets with her. That must have been a temptation, for you know how he loves music, and her voice is charming. She’s tried the charity dodge, and has come to him with tears in her eyes to get him to make plans for cottages she proposed to erect for poor people on her estate in the outer antipodes. He told me about that himself, and what do you suppose was his answer to her appeal? He told her that when she had made arrangements with the builder to go to work, to tell the latter to write to him on the subject and he would gladly furnish the plans for her cottages and feel himself honored in advancing her good work--begged her not to mention the question of payment, and bowed her out of his office with the assurance that the builder’s letter should find him most willing to co-operate, and insisted that she should wash her fair hands of these dry business details and leave them entirely to the builder and himself. She plucked up courage on the landing, to tell him she had some plans to submit. He replied to this that, as he had long since submitted himself and all his designs and aspirations to his partner, and as he did not venture to call his soul, much less his squares and angles, his own, without the approbation of Mr. Ames, her plans must be submitted to the firm at New York, where he would promise to give them his circumspect attention under the judicious eye of his chief. It must have been a funny scene,” said Cousin Eugenia, smiling. “Poor Mrs. Vere! She let him alone severely for some time after that, but she finally began again on another tack. I think she is beginning to understand now that there is one man who can resist her, and when once she is quite persuaded that she is vanquished, how she will hate him! There’s nothing she wouldn’t do to avenge herself; but I fancy Louis is as far beyond the range of her revenge as he is of her fascination. The truth is, as to Louis,” Cousin Eugenia went on, after a moment’s pause, “that he’s radically cold-blooded. He’s affectionate to his friends and relatives, and really fond of many of them, but he’s absolutely unemotional--not to be roused to deep feeling. But for this fact I fear Mrs. Vere’s efforts would have been long since crowned with success. It is really a valuable trait for a man to have, if it were only for