"Yes!" She was looking towards the crowd, but her eye was fixed, and her accents slow and grave. "Hearts live and hearts love, while time endures. The heart selects its mate in life's springtime, with judgment as untaught as that of the silly bird that asks no companion but the one the God of Nature has bestowed upon it. But you see not, my good brother"--she faced him, a smile wreathing her lip--a strange glitter in her eye--"see you not to what woeful disorders these untrained desires, this unsophisticated following out of unregulated affections would give rise? It would sap the foundations of caste; level all wholesome distinctions of society; consign the accomplished daughters of palatial halls--hoary with a semi-decade of years--to one-story cottages and a maid-of-all work; doom nice young men to the drudgery of business for the remainder of their wretched lives, to maintain wives whose dowries would not keep their lily-handed lords in French kids for a year; cover managing mammas with ignominy, and hasten ambitious papas to their costly vaults in--as Dickens has it--'some genteel place of interment.' Come what may of blasted hopes and wrecked hearts, the decencies of life must be observed. Every heart has its nerve--genuine, sensitive, sometimes vulgarly tenacious of life--but there are corrosives that will eat it out; fine, deadly wires, that can probe and torture and extract it. And when the troublesome thing is finally gotten rid of, there is an end to all obstacles to judicious courtships and eligible alliances!" She laughed scornfully, and Philip recoiled, without knowing why he did so, as he heard her. "That is all very well, when the nature of the contract is understood on both sides," he said, gloomily. "I doubt, however, whether the beautiful economy of your system will be appreciated by those whose living hearts are bound to the bloodless plaster-casts you describe." "These accidents will occur in spite of caution on the part of the best managers of suitable marriages. By far the larger proportion of the shocks inflicted upon polite circles arise from this very cause. Pygmalion grows weary of wooing his statue, and wants sympathy in his disappointment and loneliness." The dance was ended. The fantastic variations of the waltz were exchanged for a noble march--pealing through the heated rooms like a rush of the healthful sea-breeze. The spark died in Sarah's eye. Her voice took its habitual pitch. "I have permitted myself to become excited, and, I am afraid, have said many things that I had no right to think--much less to utter. If my freedom has displeased you, I am sorry." "The error--if error there were--was mine," rejoined Philip. "I led the conversation into the channel; you, after awhile, followed. I believe there is no danger of our misunderstanding each other."