"I am not engaged to any one; you mistake my face entirely, but I colored because I was silly enough to feel angry at your thinking I was wishing to be married--but it was wrong of me, because you could not understand my feelings without being told. So I must tell you," she continued smiling, "that I am a determined old maid; though, perhaps, you may think such a resolution needless in a place where gentlemen seldom come to disturb our equanimity." "What, wedded to your duties, are you? Or what other queer reason may have led you to such a determination," enquired Lucy, who could not help feeling that her new friend's speech meant more than it usually does in the mouth of a beautiful girl; and she was surprised to think she should wish to retire from the field of conquest, before actually driven from it by dulness or age. Her own vanity could not conceal from her, a certain indescribable something which rendered her cousin particularly attractive, and, though she certainly ranked her second to herself, that did not imply any very low degree of merit. Mabel's composure, which was seldom lost, was now entirely restored, and she answered Lucy's wondering eyes with one of her peculiarly sweet and gentle smiles. "You may well wonder," said she, "that I, who seem so little your senior, should already have made such a resolution. I too, who am fond of society, fond of companionship, and all that is domestic, and choose solitude only as wholesome medicine; but some destinies are fixed early, others late; and I, who once thought, and still think, marriage, with its social harmony and sweet feelings of dependence, most fitted for a woman's nature, have yet quite made up my mind to remain single." "I shall not believe you till you give me some good reason," said Lucy. "You are too kind," replied Mabel, as her voice slightly trembled, "to seek to probe a wound only from the curiosity of seeing how deep it is--when you have no power to heal. I speak of myself now," she added, hastily; "lest in our future conversations, you may pain me without knowing it, and perhaps I might think you unkind when you were only seeking to amuse me. Oh, Lucy," said she, turning round with sudden energy, "I have suffered terribly, and still suffer, when I lose my self-command for a moment--do not then talk of my loving or needing love--do not tease me with the intention of pleasing--do not talk--" Mabel suddenly stopped and burst into tears--for a very long time, she had never spoken intimately with a young girl in her own station of life, and the novelty had surprised her. A few large drops rolled quickly down her crimson cheeks, but were soon brushed away, and half smiling, she begged her cousin's forgiveness for speaking so hastily--in a few more seconds, she was again gentle and submissive as a child. "Then must I never speak of love at all?" said Lucy, fearing that all the most interesting of her stories would find an unwilling listener.