“I have just been visiting Miss Agnes Lincoln,” said my young friend Kate Wilson to me one morning. “Truly, Miss Enna, she is the most charming woman I have ever known—always excepting, of course, your own dear self. Though no longer young, she is still beautiful—intelligent, clever, without the slightest tinge of pedantry; gentle and loveable. Why is it that she has never married? She has been a devoted daughter and sister; I have always felt surprise and regret that she should not have been a wife.” The tone of voice told the regret which those words expressed, and caused me to smile as I looked at my bright-eyed friend, who, being on the eve of marriage herself with one she loved very dearly, thought, of course, the married state the only true vocation for a woman. “But, Kate,” I replied, “Agnes Lincoln has always had duties sufficient to employ her in her home circle—her heart has been too much occupied with providing for the comfort of her brothers and sisters, and nursing a poor invalid mother, to go out on voyages, in order to seek a fellow heart, or to attend to the said fellow heart, should it come wooing. Only unoccupied, free-from-care bodies, like your sweet self, can find time to fall in love and marry—” “Nonsense!” said the blushing Kate, “do not tease me with such _badinage_. I wish you would tell me Miss Lincoln’s history—romantic I have already determined it is—for those deep, dark eyes of hers give evidences, by their bright flashings at times, of the existence of a fount of passion, which, I am sure, must have welled up and bubbled over at some period of her life. You have known her intimately from girlhood, Miss Duval, come, tell me the tale. See, it is the very time for a long story, we are certain of being alone, no stupid visiters will interrupt us, for those threatening, overhanging clouds are already beginning to let down their watery contents—the fire snaps and sparkles in a most sociable manner, and I will spend the whole day with you in this cheery little room of yours.” Accordingly she threw aside her bonnet and shawl—pushed what she called “the troublesome desk, and still more wearying work-basket,” away from me, then throwing herself on a low ottoman beside me, looked most persuasively into my face for the web of romance she was determined I should weave, and with the air of one determined not to be denied. “Do you deserve, Kate,” I said, “that I should entertain you, when you seem to think so slightingly of the mission of my sisterhood? Saucy girl! are old maids always to be regarded by such sparkling, merry witches like yourself, as leading lives useless to both man and womankind?”