Young America sipping cobblers, and roving about in very loose and immoral coats, voted it "a case." The elderly ladies thought it a "shocking flirtation." The old gentlemen who smoke cigars in the easy chairs under the cool colonnade, watched the course of events through the slow curling clouds of tobacco, and looked at me, when I passed them, as if I were juvenile for a Lothario; while the great dancing, bowling, driving, flirting, and fooling mass of the Saratoga population thought it all natural and highly improper. It is astonishing to recur to an acquaintance which has become a large and luminous part of your life, and discover that it lasted a week. It is saddening to sit among the withered rose-leaves of a summer, and remember that each rose in its prime seemed the sweetest of roses. The old ladies called it "shocking," and the young ladies sigh that it is "heartless," and the many condemn, while the few wrap themselves in scornful pride at the criminal fickleness of men. One such I met on a quiet Sunday morning when Lulu had just left me to go and read to her mother. "You are a vain coxcomb," was the promising prelude of my friend's conversation. But she _was_ a friend, so I did not frown nor play that I was offended. "Why a coxcomb?" "Because you are flirting with that girl merely for your own amusement. You know perfectly well that she loves you, and you know equally well that you mean nothing. You are a flippant, shallow Arthur Pendennis--" "_Pas trop vite._ If I meet a pleasant person in a pleasant place, and we like each other, I, for my part, will follow the whim of the hour. I will live while I live--provided, always, that I injure no other person in following that plan--and in every fairly supposable case of this kind the game is equal. Good morning." Now you will say that I was afraid to continue the argument, and that I felt self-convicted of folly. Not at all; but I chanced to see Lulu returning, and I strolled down the piazza to meet her. She was flushed, and tears were ill-concealed in her eyes. Her mother had apprised her that she was to leave in the morning. It was all over.