Rose had heard of compound interest; nay, she had even had its nature explained to her; and though at the end of the explanation she was more in the dark than at the beginning, she attributed that to her own obtuseness, and contented herself with recollecting that it was something which began by doubling itself, and went on doubling itself, and something else, until--she did not know exactly what; so she supplied the blank by adding, until the desired result should be attained. And now, recalling the definition thus attained, she decided that the advisable thing would be to place her hundred pounds in the most favourable situation for catching that desirable epidemic, compound interest. Accordingly, with much diffidence, and a just appreciation of the very hazy nature of her dissolving views in regard to the investment of capital generally, Rose communicated her ideas to Frere. That gentleman heard her out with a good-humoured smile playing around the corners of his mouth. “Well,” he said, as she concluded, “you are but a woman after all, I see!” “Why, what have you taken me for hitherto, then?” demanded Rose. This very pertinent inquiry appeared somewhat to puzzle the individual to whom it was addressed, for he pushed his hair back from his forehead and rubbed his chin with an air of perplexity ere he answered, “If I were what they call a lady’s man, which means a conceited puppy, I should grin at you to show my white teeth, and reply, ‘An Angel;’ but seeing that _man_ was made a little lower than the angels--though, by the way, that’s a mistranslation--and that women are inferior to men, to call a woman an angel is to be guilty of a logical absurdity, and is only to be excused in the case of lovers, who, as men labouring under a mental delusion--temporary monomaniacs, in fact--are scarcely to be looked upon as rational beings.” “But if you are not a puppy, and I am not an angel, both which propositions I am perfectly ready to admit, why do you consider it necessary to enunciate your apparent discovery that, after all, I am _only_ a woman?” inquired Rose. “Because, if you must know,” growled Frere, at length fairly brought to bay, “you have hitherto talked so much sense, and so little nonsense, that I’ve looked upon you more as a man than a woman. You wanted the truth, and now you’ve got it,” he continued in a tone like the rumbling of distant thunder, as Rose, clapping her hands in girl-like delight at having elicited this confession, replied with a low, silvery laugh, “I thought so! I fancied that was it! Oh, the conceit of these lords of the creation! And now that you have found out that I am not the mental Amazon your fancy painted me, do you intend _quite_ to give me up?” As she said this, half playfully, half in earnest, raising her calm, grey eyes, which now sparkled with unwonted animation, to his face, Frere experienced a (to him) entirely new sensation. He was for the first time conscious of the effect produced by