These were the thoughts that coursed through my mind as I pondered over her last remark. I had not forgotten that I had a great work to accomplish. The missionary spirit was ever burning within me, but it was necessary to examine the ground before attempting to prepare it for seed. I'll try her as "still deep," thought I. "Did you go out much last season?" I said, by way of giving an easy turn to the conversation. "No; we have been very little in London, but we are going up this year. We have always resisted leaving the country, but mamma wants to make a home for Broadhem." "Ah! it is his first season, and naturally he will go out a great deal. Of course you know the three reasons which take men into society in London," I said, after a pause. "No, I don't. What are they?" "Either to find a wife, or to look after one's wife, or to look after somebody else's." I was helping myself to potatoes as I made this observation in a tone of easy indifference; but as she did not immediately answer, I glanced at her, and was at once overcome with remorse and confusion; her neck and face were suffused with a glow which produced the immediate effect upon my sensitive nature of making me feel a brute; her very eyelids trembled as she kept them steadily lowered: and yet what had I said which I had not repeatedly said before to both the "slows," one of the "worldlies," and all the "fasts"? Even some of the "worldly holies" rather relish this style of conversation, though I always wait for them to begin it, for fear of accidents. Fortunately, however much I am moved, I never lose my presence of mind; so I deliberately upset my champagne-glass into her plate, and, with the delicacy and tact of a refined nature, so worded the apologies with, which I overwhelmed her, that she forgave my first _gaucherie_ in laughing over the second. She can be nothing now, thought I, but "wholly worldly," but she should be ticketed, like broadcloth, "superfine;" so I must tread cautiously. "I hear Lord Broadhem is going to make his political _début_ in a few days," I remarked, after a pause. "What line does he think of taking?" "He has not told me exactly what he means to say, as I am afraid we do not quite agree in what philosophers call 'first principles,'" she replied, with a smile and a slight sigh.