“And have you no fears for yourself? Where so many have yielded their willing hearts, do you expect to escape without paying the same penalty?” “Fears!” answered Lucia. “Why, Charlotte, you don’t think I would give up my affections to one who has no heart, and never had one; or, if he had, it has been so completely divided and sub-divided, quartered and requartered, and parceled out by inches, that not a fragment is left to hang a hope upon! Why, I should as soon think of falling in love with one of those effigies of beau-dom—those waxen busts at a barber’s window—as with this hollow-hearted Frank Gadsby.” “You are right, Lucia; for I certainly think that when you marry, it would be well to have at least one heart between you and your _cara sposa_, for I am sure you have none,” said Charlotte, laughing. “Now, that is the unkindest cut of all, Charlotte—I no heart! Why, I am ‘all heart,’ as poor Mrs. Skewton would say,” answered Lucia. “Ah, Lucia, it is conceded by all, I believe, that you are an arrant coquette.” “I a coquette!” exclaimed Lucia. “I deny the charge; there is my gage!” drawing off her little glove and throwing it at the feet of Charlotte. “I accept the challenge,” answered her friend. “In the first place, let me remind you of a poor Mr. F——.” “You need not remind me of him,” answered Lucia. “I am sure I shall not soon forget him, with his tiresome calls every day, nor his attempts to look tender with those small, twinkling gray eyes of his. Imagine an owl in love, that’s all.” “And yet you encouraged his visits. Then, there was young Dornton.” “Dornton! yes, I remember. Poor fellow, how he did torment me with his execrable verses!” “Execrable! If I remember, Lucia, you once told me they were beautiful.” “Ah, I tired of them, and him too, in a fortnight. Why, Charlotte, it was a perfect surfeit of antimony wrapped up in honey.” “Then, your long walks last summer with Dr. Ives.” “Were very pleasant walks until he grew sentimental, and suddenly popped down upon his knees, one day, in the high grass, like a winged partridge; he looked so ridiculous that really I could not help laughing in his face. It was a bitter pill; doctor, as he was, he could not swallow it.” “For six weeks you flirted with Henry Nixon,” continued Charlotte. “Why, he was your shadow, Lucia; what could have tempted you to trifle with him as you did? I am sure he loved you.” “There you are mistaken,” was the reply. “He was only flattered by my smiles and proud of being in my train. Such magnificent bouquets, too, as he brought me! It was party season, you know, and his self-love, thus embodied in a flower to be worn by me, was quite as harmless to him as convenient for myself.” “But not so harmless were the smiles and flattering words you bestowed upon young Fairlie. O, Lucia, your thoughtless vanity ruined the happiness of that young man, and drove him off to a foreign clime, leaving a widowed mother to mourn his absence.”