“It is rather strange, Mrs. Doring, that I tell you everything so frankly. I have never been so confidential with any one before. Chatterer as I appear to be I am as proud as Clara Vere de Vere, and keep my own affairs to myself; but in talking with you everything bubbles right out, yet you never ask any questions. I shouldn’t mind telling you anything, even if it wasn’t to my credit, I feel so much confidence in you, and somehow it helps me to tell you. I was attracted to you from the first, but you were so reserved and unapproachable that if it had not been for this illness of yours, I doubt if we ever should have become so well acquainted. You have a curious effect on me. I couldn’t tell a fib to you nor to any one in your presence if I wanted to, and yet it has always been easy to me to tell little bits of lies about things that couldn’t hurt any one. I never thought there was any harm in it. But somehow I can’t do it when you are near, nor even when I think of you, and I shouldn’t wonder if I gave up the habit altogether. Do you remember one day before you got sick, when several of us were in the parlor and I had a new fan and the rest were admiring it?” “Yes.” “Well, Mrs. Orton asked me how much it cost. Of course it’s the worst of manners to ask the price of things, but one meets plenty of impertinent, ill-bred people as one goes along, and must be civil to them. I was about to tell her that it cost five dollars, though it only cost two, when I saw you looking at me, and quick as a flash out came the truth. You didn’t know the price of it, so I wasn’t afraid you would catch me in a fib; but I was ashamed not to speak the truth in your presence. Your eyes look into one, deep down inside, and expect to see everything there sweet and clean and honest, and I could not disappoint them.” “You can’t be half so wicked as you represent yourself, for you have one of the sweetest faces I ever saw, and one of the most beautiful,” said Mrs. Doring, with fervent admiration. The Butterfly lilted out a significant little laugh. “Yes, I have been told that I have an innocent face; but that is a freak of nature, for I am not innocent. I am tolerably--yes, tolerably well informed on some subjects, and I do one thing that you will consider abominable, I flirt.” “Dear friend, do tell me exactly what it is to flirt,” Cartice asked, entreatingly. She remembered that her husband had taken refuge in that word on the occasion of the affair with Mrs. Parker. The Butterfly looked at her pityingly. “If any other woman asked me that question,” she said, “I should be sure she was a villain of the deepest dye, and was affecting ignorance in order to pull the wool over my eyes; but you are such a muff about such things that I can readily believe you don’t know. It isn’t very easy to explain. Words can’t describe it very well. Not mincing matters in my case it’s making a bid for the attention of men and getting it.”