But since I have been going into company I am perfectly sick of myself. For the first year it was new to me, and I was light-headed and thought it glorious fun. It was excitement all the time--dressing, and going, and seeing, and being admired, and, well--flirting. I confess I liked it, and went into it with all my might,--parties, balls, opera, concerts all the winter in New York, and parties, balls, etc. at Newport and Saratoga in Summer. It was a sort of prolonged delirium. I didn't stop to think about anything, and lived like a butterfly, by the hour. Oh! the silly things I have said and done! I find myself blushing hot when I think of them, because, you see, I am so excitable, and sometimes am so carried away, that afterward I don't know what I may have said or done! And now all this is coming to some end or other. This going into company can't last forever. We must be married--that's what we are for, they say; that's what all this dressing, and dancing, and flying about has got to end in. And so mamma and Aunt Maria are on thorns, to get me off their hands and well established. I have been out three seasons. I am twenty-three, and Alice has just come out, and it is expected, of course, that I retire with honor. I will not stop to tell you that I have rejected about the usual number of offers that young ladies in my position get, and I haven't seen anybody that I care a copper for. Well, now, in this crisis, comes this Mr. Sidney, who proposed to me last Fall, and I refused point-blank, simply and only because I didn't love him, which seemed to me at that time reason enough. Then mamma and Aunt Maria took up the case, and told me that I was a foolish girl to throw away such an offer: a man of good character and standing, an excellent business man, and so immensely rich--with such a splendid place at Newport, and another in New York, and a fortune like Aladdin's lamp! I said I didn't love him, and they said I hadn't tried; that I _could_ love him if I only made up my mind to, and why wouldn't I try? Then papa turned in, who very seldom has anything to say to us girls, or about any family matters, and said how delighted _he_ should be to see me married to a man so capable of taking care of me. So, among them all, I agreed that I would receive his visits and attentions _as a friend_, with a view to trying to love him; and ever since I have been banked up in flowers and confectionery, and daily drifting into relations of closer and closer intimacy.