Mrs. Dormer looked sympathetic at this intelligence, and Ariana remarked kindly—“Business troubles you then! It must be very tormenting,” and a suspicion flashed across her mind that men, after all, might sometimes have an excuse for their ill-humor. “Well, if we are to lose our money, let us keep our temper,” she added, as she rose to leave the table. Then turning to her sister she said—“Don’t sit up for me, Harriet. If I am not at home before nine, I shall stay all night at sister Jane’s—she sent for me to spend the evening with her, and—and you know it is always quite uncertain whether Mr. Daley will be in a humor to escort me home.” CHAPTER III. “If I were only sure that fishes did not feel, I should not mind hooking them,” said a lad of tender heart. Miss Ariana Huntingdon was convinced that men did not feel, and therefore had not the slightest scruple in taking captive as many as came within range of her fascinations. Had the misanthropical little coquette been old, or ugly, the stronger sex would have risen in a body to expel her from the city, but being very young and very pretty, they seemed to love her all the better for her alledged heresy as to man’s supremacy. “That is one of the most beautiful apparitions that I ever met,” said a young gentleman who caught a glimpse of our heroine upon a fashionable promenade, crowded with insipid faces, whose fair unmeaningness was made more conspicuous from being contrasted with the gayest of colors. “Ashes of roses” would have been the only appropriate hue for some of these _passé_ damsels, of whose bloom certainly but the cinders were remaining, on which the marks of their former beauty were faintly traced in flittering characters. There was a peculiar freshness and individuality in Ariana’s appearance, arising from her clear, original intellect, which made her always noticed, even by those who did not admire the piquant style of her beauty. Then her dress, without trespassing upon the mode of the season, bore some tasteful addition, so unique, that it was at once surmised that she must be very _distingué_ to be allowed such independence. “Madame Bonheurie has not a hat trimmed in that manner,” said a characterless parvenu, who could not have afforded even a ribbon without a pedigree. The article of dress, thus criticised, was a hat of delicate rose-color, but, alas! instead of wearing the stiff top-knots of ribbon which were then in vogue, Ariana had arranged the trimming so as to drop upon one side, without hiding the swan-like throat of its _petite_ wearer. Her mantle, too, though unexceptionable in the richness and color of the velvet, was but slightly trimmed, and its graceful sleeves were quite unlike the stiff armlets through which some fair ladies’ hands were peeping in unnatural constraint.