Those were two wretched hours, which I spent alone on the 18th of January, 18--. I pleaded, with truth, the lady's excuse for not driving with Lady Amabel to meet Sir Adrian. She took Clarence Fairfax with her in the carriage. It was dusk when they returned, and a britzska full of visitors followed the General's equipage. I was at the head of the stairs, when I heard Mrs Rashleigh's voice; the servants were lighting the lamps. I looked over the banisters, she and two or three other ladies were coming up to arrange their toilette before dinner. Clarence stood at the foot of the stairs; he was laughing at some bold sally of Mrs Rashleigh's, for he said, "for shame." She had a brilliant bouquet in her hand; she tapped him on the cheek, and he, catching the beautiful hand, drew off the glove, and kissed it. I rushed back to my dim chamber. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ All this was painfully incomprehensible to me. I was totally ignorant of the character of a male flirt--I set down Mrs Rashleigh as a friend!--a dashing, impudent woman, but only a friend--thirty-two years old, as she acknowledged, and every one said she was at least thirty-five, to me at sixteen she appeared old; Clarence Fairfax was five-and-twenty. I dare say that the intimacy of these two people would have been a mystery to you; and yet, ere this, you may have learned how mischievous is the influence which a bold, meretricious, experienced woman, whose chief study has been to please the other sex, gains by perseverance over a vain young man. Clarence Fairfax loved me as well as he was capable of loving anything besides himself; but he was enthralled by this daring being--he was afraid of her. Ah! you may doubt; but history tells us how vain and indolent men have quailed before vicious women. She even exercised a sort of mysterious power over gentle Lady Amabel. The latter had an instinctive, feminine dread of Mrs Rashleigh's sarcastic laugh and audacious stare. As for Sir Adrian, she amused him. She was a dashing rider, too; she had given it up for some years, but returned to it on being tempted to try Zara, my well-trained Arab. God forgive me for my suspicions--it acquired some dangerous tricks under her tutoring; she used to boast of her talent for the _manege_, and scandalised the decorous Dutch ladies, who, she said, were jealous of her, by riding with the General and his staff about the square at a grand review. Lady Amabel was beginning to penetrate the cause of my fits of dejection, when unexpected news from the military posts startled both her and myself.