Much did she despise the follies of the fashionable world, and very contemptuously did she regard the ignorant and half-educated part of the community, and that part in her judgment consisted of nearly all the world, her own self and one or two particular friends excepted. Into this select number Clara Rivolta was most graciously admitted. Miss Henderson, though gifted with a most ample and comfortable conceit of her own superior powers and acquirements, was still not backward, but rather liberal and dexterous in administering the delicious dose of flattery to those whom she honored with her notice and approbation, as being superior to the ordinary mass of mortals. Clara Rivolta received the homage paid to her mind and acquirements as the effusions of a warm heart and generous spirit. It is possible, however, to mistake heat of head for warmth of heart. This was a mistake into which Miss Henderson was perpetually falling, both as it related to herself and to others. Not only was the young lady liberal in her praises of those whom she would condescend to flatter with the honor of her approbation, but she absolutely praised them at her own expense, expressing her high sense of their superiority to herself. But it should be added, that this kind of homage always expected a return with interest, and the language in which she praised her friends was only put forth as a model and specimen of that kind of homage which she should be best pleased to receive from her dear dear friends. To the vanity of intellect Miss Henderson added the vanity of sentiment. She had read something in books about the heart, and about sentiment and feeling, and so on; and she thought that there must be something fine in that concerning which so many fine words had been used. Thereupon, with that conceit she added sentimentality to the rest of her acquirements; and an acquirement in good truth it really was, seeing that it was by no means natural. Not the less fluently could the young lady discourse on that subject, because she knew nothing about it; but, on the other hand, she set herself up as a judge and censor-general on all her acquaintances and the world beside on the subject of sensibility of heart. She had enjoyed many opportunities of falling in love, and those which she had enjoyed she had not overlooked. Many and many a time was her heart lost, but never irrecoverably. Few were the gentlemen who thought it very prudent to venture to pay serious court to a young lady of lofty thoughts and lowly means. A very slight degree of notice was sufficient however to set if not her heart in flames, at least her tongue in motion to her confidential friends concerning sentiment and sensibility, and all that sort of thing.