"She _must_ admit it, Ellen--of course she must. It's Ida that puts her up to all her strange ideas, and will end by making her as odd as she is herself. There's that new young man, that Henderson--why don't we turn him to account? Ida has taken a fancy to him, I hear, and it's exactly the thing. Only get Ida's thoughts running that way and she'll let Eva alone, and stop putting notions into her head. Henderson is a gentleman, and would be a very proper match for Ida. He is literary, and she is literary. He is for all the modern ideas, and so is she. I'm sure, I go with all my heart for encouraging him. It's exactly the thing." And Aunt Maria "Shook her ambrosial curls and gave the nod," with a magnificence equal to Jupiter in the old Homeric days. CHAPTER XXI. I DISCOVER THE BEAUTIES OF FRIENDSHIP. Much has been written lately concerning the doctrine of friendship between men and women. It is thought and said by some that there lies an unexplored territory in our American life, and we have the example of Madame Récamier set before us to show how perfectly intimate and devoted a whole circle of manly friends may be with one fair woman, without detriment or disadvantage to their domestic ties or hers. The adorable Juliet is the intimate friend at once of Matthew Montmorenci, the saint, of Chateaubriand, the poet, and of an indefinite number of artists and men of letters, all of whom address her in language of adoration and devotion, and receive from her affectionate messages in return. Chateaubriand spends every afternoon with Juliet, and every evening with his invalid wife, like a devoted and dutiful husband, and this state of things goes on from year to year without trouble and without scandal. It was with some such sublimated precedent in my head that I allowed myself to yield to the charming temptation opened to me by my acquaintance with Eva Van Arsdel. Supposing by Jim's account that she was already engaged, looking on myself as yet far off from the place where I could think of marriage, what was there to hinder my enjoying her society? Of course, there was no possible danger to myself, and it would be absolute coxcombry to think that there would be any to her. She, who had been a queen of fashion, and who had the world under her feet, if she deigned to think kindly of a poor _littérateur_, it could surely lead to nothing dangerous. I might have been warned, if I were wise, by the fact that the night after my first presentation I lay awake and thought over all she had said, and counted the days that should intervene before next Wednesday evening. I would not for the world have had Jim Fellows divine what was going on within me; in fact I took as much pains to cajole and pacify and take myself in as if I had been a third party.