The shot had gone home; her enmity was gratified; she had not been anxious to attend from the first, and therefore was not disappointed; she did not suffer from pained sensibility; the frequency of these encounters had inured her to ambushed attack; she was fast becoming a match for them in stoicism, and surpassed them in satire; in this skirmish she had borne flying colours from the field; but had the contrary of all these things been true, she could not have been more wretched. She hated, as spirits like hers only can hate, her cold-hearted persecutors, and exulted in their defeat; yet close upon triumph came a twinge of remorse and a sense of debasement. "I am sinking to their level! I could compete with them upon no other ground. They are despicable in their worldliness and malice; shall I grovel and hiss with them? It seems inevitable--debarred as I am from all associations which can elevate and clear my mind. Oh! the low envy in that girl's face as she named my 'suitor!' Destitute of mental wants herself, she thinks of nothing but courtship and a settlement! But this matter must be arranged." She opened her writing-desk. Her chamber was her retreat and sanctum, and she had lavished much taste and time in fitting it up. All its appurtenances spoke of genius and refinement. With a poetic love for warm colors and striking contrasts, crimson and black relieved, each the other, in her carpet and curtains. The bedstead, seats and tables, fashioned into elegant and uncommon forms by her orders, were draped and cushioned with the same Tyrian hue. Books and portfolios were heaped and strewed upon the shelves and stands; and in one corner, upon a wrought bronze tripod, was an exquisite statuette--a girl kneeling beside an empty cage, the lifeless songster stark and cold in her hand. Several of Ida's schoolmates were with her when she purchased it from an itinerant Italian. They saw in the expression of hopeless sadness, only regret for her bird. Ida noted that her gaze was not upon its ruffled plumes, but to its silent home; and that one hand lay upon her heart. Looking more narrowly she discerned upon the pedestal the simple exclamation, "_Et mon coeur!_" Henceforward it had become her Lares. She had scattered flowers over it, kissed it weepingly, and with lips rigid in stern despair, laid her hot brow to the white forehead of the voiceless mourner. She must have something to love, and the insensate image was dear, because it told of a grief such as hers. Now, after she dipped her pen in the standish, she paused to contemplate it,--the red light bathing it in a life-like glow,--and the blood receded from her face, as she uttered aloud its touching complaint, "Et _mon_ coeur!"