And yet, why not? To be sure, judging from Quizby’s letter and his frank acknowledgment of an attachment to her in his youth, the lady must have arrived by this time at middle age, and Plumtree was a mere boy (for, after all, a man of five-and-twenty is little more than a boy), actually shaving for whiskers, top-dressing with balm of Columbia, and raising an abundant crop of pimples as the result. A woman too, after she arrives at a certain point of maturity, say five-and-thirty, remains for an incredible period at that attractive stage of her charms. She has lost indeed the bright freshness of youth; but if she has been really handsome, she has gained in exchange a certain depth of colouring and intensity of expression, which are equally efficient weapons of offence. Then, while the passing years blunt her darts scarcely perceptibly, every day adds to her experience and dexterity in their use. A _coquette_ of twenty years’ standing is like an old _maître d’armes_ of the Empire, cool, wary, dauntless, and skilful; _rusé_ in the art of destruction, and taught by a hundred combats to take every advantage, and never to throw a chance away. I have often thought, notwithstanding the dancing exploit, a man would have been safer with Herodias’s daughter than with Herodias herself. Then a young man, if he once suffers himself to be captivated by a woman considerably his senior, becomes rather childish, not to say imbecile, in the process. He goes into leading-strings forthwith, and there is no folly or extravagance of which he is incapable. Shall I ever forget what a fool young Larkspur made of himself about old Lady Foxglove, who might have been his mother, and looked as if she _had_ been his wet-nurse? Nor can I cease to regret the fate of my poor friend Capon, who left college to run away with Mrs. Mallard the actress, at a period when that lady had become too aged and infirm for genteel comedy parts at any of the theatres royal, and of whom I last heard at a French watering-place, living in cheap lodgings at the head of a grown-up family not his own, nor indeed, unless scandal be more scandalous than usual, the issue of the talented Mr. Mallard deceased.