Act first--Scene, New York. A young girl and a young man are in love, and engaged to be married. The striking originality of this idea will startle any one who has never heard of such a thing before. Lilian Westbrook and Harold Routledge have a lover's quarrel. Never mind what the cause of it. To quote a passage from the play itself: "A woman never quarrels with a man she doesn't love"--that is one of the minor laws of dramatic construction--"and she is never tired of quarreling with a man she does love." I dare not announce this as another law of female human nature; it is merely the opinion of one of my characters--a married man. Of course, there are women who do not quarrel with any one; and there are angels; but, as a rule, the women we feel at liberty to fall in love with do quarrel now and then; and they almost invariably quarrel with their husbands or lovers first, their other acquaintances must often be content with their smiles. But, when Lilian announces to Harold Routledge that their engagement is broken forever, he thinks she means to imply that she doesn't intend to marry him. Women are often misunderstood by our more grossly practical sex; we are too apt to judge of what they mean by what they say. The relations, if there are any, between a woman's tongue and her thoughts form the least understood section, perhaps, of dramatic law. You will get some idea of the intricacies of this subject, if one of your literary professors will draw you a diagram of what a woman doesn't mean when she uses the English language. Harold Routledge, almost broken-hearted, bids Lilian farewell, and leaves her presence. Lilian herself, proud and angry, allows him to go; waits petulantly a moment for him to return; then, forlorn and wretched, she bursts into the flood of tears which she intended to shed upon his breast. Under ordinary circumstances, those precious drops would not have been wasted. Young girls, when they quarrel with their lovers, are not extravagant with their tears; they put them carefully to the best possible use; and, I dare say, some of Lilian's tears would have fallen on a sheet of notepaper; and the stained lines of a letter would have reached Harold by the next post, begging him to come back, and to let her forgive him for all the spiteful things she had said to him. Unfortunately, however, just at this critical juncture in the affairs of love--while Cupid was waiting, hat in hand, to accompany the letter to its destination and keep an eye on the postman--Lilian's father enters. He is on the verge of financial ruin, and he has just received a letter from Mr. John Strebelow, a man of great wealth, asking him for his daughter's hand in marriage. Mr. Westbrook urges her to accept him, not from any selfish motives, but because he dreads to leave, in his old age, a helpless girl, trained only to luxury and extravagance, to a merciless world. Lilian, on her part, shudders at the thought of her father renewing the struggle of