All this was very agreeable, but also very perplexing. At the end of the season I found myself as far from making a choice as ever. If I indulged one taste at the expense of the others, I should become a less perfect man; nor could I decide in which of my pursuits I needed sympathy the most--music, painting, dancing, riding, reading. Alas! could I find one woman congenial in all my moods I would marry her immediately. Wearied by the attentions of so many, I yet feared an imperfect life spent with but one. I saw that I had made another mistake, and retired to my country-seat, "The Beauties," to recruit. I know there is a modern idea that women are the equals of men (the poets, you remember, thought them superior), and many may consider it odd that I did not find it so. I do not wish to offend. To those who hold that opinion I modestly suggest my unfortunate superiority as the probable cause of my failure. I do not blame the ladies, be it understood. Again I sat down to plan and reflect. I looked mournfully on the past and less hopefully on the future. The obstacles were beginning to dishearten me, but even after a second failure I dared not relinquish my quest: my mother's wishes must be fulfilled. A woman worthy of me: behold the difficulty! What course of action should I now pursue? At last I had a flash of brain-light on the subject. I would look for the purely good, rejecting the intellectual entirely. I would plunge into the country and seek a bride fresh from the hands of Nature, a wild flower without fashion, guile or brains--one who in leaving me free to follow my own pursuits would yet adorn my life with charms of the heart--a heart that had known no love but mine. It was in the most beautiful month of autumn that I made this resolve, which I lost no time in putting into execution. I wrote to my old college friend, Dick Hearty, that I would spend a month with him: he had often invited me to visit him in the country. I counted on doing enough love-making in that time to win my wild rose, and at my return I would bring home my bride. I reasoned that in those unsophisticated regions, in the shadow of the virgin forest, the trammels of long courtship and other fashionable follies are unknown: heart meets heart as the pure woodland streams meet each other and become one. Before I set out I gave a dinner-party at The Beauties to announce to my gentleman friends the joyful event. At the dessert I rose and proposed the health of my future bride. "And may it be years before she arrives at The Beauties!" mumbled Percy Flyaway when they had drunk the toast. "I hope you will all welcome her at a grand reception here in--about a month or six weeks." I remembered just in time that I had best not fix a date, as something might intervene. A storm of questions, exclamations and remarks ensued. "Lovely?" "As fair as poet's dreaming." "Die Vernon?" "Not for Joe!" "The Soprano?" A shake of my head. "Anabel?" "No." "Who is she?"