In the afternoon, as I sat gloomily in my room, with feet protruding from the window, and body inclined rearward, (the American attitude of despair,) the piano tinkled. It was the same melody which had attracted me a few happy days before. Strengthening myself with a powerful resolution to extricate myself from the bewitching influence which had surrounded me, I arose, and went straightway to the parlor. Could it be that a flash of pleasure beamed on Miss Tarlingford's face? or was I a deluded gosling? The latter suggestion seemed the more credible, so I cheerfully adopted it. "We have missed you, Mr. Plovins," said the fair enslaver; "I hope you have not been unwell?" "Unwell?--oh, no, no!" "You have not been near me--us, today," (reprovingly,) "not even at dinner; and the trout were superb." A sudden hope mounted within me. "Miss Tarlingford, pray, excuse me,--your first name, may I ask what it is?" "Arabella is my name, and" (whisperingly) "you may use it, if you like." "Oh, hideous horror! And this is what they call flirtation," I thought. And the hope which had risen blazing, like a rocket, went down fuliginous, like the stick. "Mr. Plovins, I will say you are very--very inconstant, to be absent all day, thus." "Miss Tarlingford, it is not inconstancy, it is billiards." "Billiards!" "Billiards. I adore them. You know nothing of billiards; women never do. They are my joy. Pardon me," (with a sudden uprising of the moral sense,) "I have an engagement at the billiard-room, and I should be there." "Dear me! I should like to do billiards." "Heaven forbid!" "Why so, Sir?" "No, I do not mean that; but ladies never play billiards." "I suppose there is no reason why they should not?" "A thousand." "Why, what harm?" "My dear Miss Tarlingford, if your first name were not Arabella,--alas, alas!--there would be none." "Nonsense! now you are laughing at me. Come, you shall teach me billiards." "It cannot be, Miss Tarlingford." (Low tragedy tones.) "Why not?" "Because your name is Arabella." "Very well, Sir,--if you do not like my name, you need not repeat it." "I adore it; it is not that. Forgive me." "Then I will get my hat";--and her light footsteps tapped upon the stairs. Here was a state of things! Where were my firmness and my resolution now? Where was the Pythian probity for which, according to my expectations, Lillivan was to have poured Damoniac gratitude upon me? Was I, or was I not, rapidly degenerating into villany? I felt that I was, and blushed for my family. If her name had been anything but Arabella,--anything the initial of which was not A, then I could have justified myself; but now,--and I was about to teach her billiards! To what depth of depravity had I come at last! She rejoined me, beaming with anticipation and radiant with the exercise of running down-stairs. Together we entered the billiard-room.