Would you like to assist, invisibly, at one of those two-handed "free-and-easies," where notes are compared and confidences exchanged, where the fair warriors "shoulder their _fans_, and show how fields were won?" Perhaps our vanity would suffer though our curiosity were gratified. The proverb about listeners has come in since the time of Gyges, it is true; but his luck was exceptional, and would not often follow his Ring. Campaspe _en deshabille_ is not invariably kind. It is a popular superstition that men are apt, at certain seasons, to speak rather lightly, if not superciliously, of the beings whom they ought to delight to honor. If so, be sure the medal has its reverse. When you secured that gardenia from Amy's bouquet, or that ribbon from Helen's glove trimming, you went home with a placid sense of self-gratulation, flattering yourself you had done it rather diplomatically, without compromising your boasted freedom by word or sign. Perhaps, two hours later, you figured conspicuously in a train of shadowy captives adorning the conqueror's ideal ovation. A change of color of which you were unconscious, a tremulous pressure of fingers that you risked involuntarily--a sentence that was meant to be careless and indifferent, but ended by being earnest and imploring--all these were commented upon in the select committee, and estimated at their proper value. Very keen-sighted are those soft almond eyes ambushed behind their trailing lashes, and from them the sternest stoic may not long conceal his wound. The Knight of Persia never groaned, or shrank, or drooped his crest when the quarrel struck him; but Amala needed only to look down to see his blood red upon the waters of the ford. Some penalty must attach itself to unauthorized intruders, even in thought, upon the _Cerealia_. I don't wish to be disagreeable, or to suggest unpleasant misgivings to the masculine mind, but--do you think we are always compassionated as much as we deserve? I own to a horrible suspicion that our betrayals of weakness form matter of exultation, and that our tenderest emotions are not unfrequently derided. Clearly this delightful sympathy can only exist where fancies, and ambitions, and interests do not clash. They seldom need do so: there is room enough for all. So much disposable devotion is abroad in this world, that no one woman can monopolize it. It is a tolerably fair handicap, on the whole; and even the second horse may land a very satisfactory stake. Never was night when the moon shone so dazzlingly as to blind us to the brilliancy of "a star or two beside." Bothwell, and Chatelet, and Rizzio were not the only love-stricken ones in Holyrood. Had the Queen of Scots been thrice as charming, glances, and sighs, and words enough would still have been found to satisfy the most exacting of her Maries.