The mature siren is wiser than this. She knows exactly what she has and what she can do; and before all things avoids whatever seems too youthful for her years; and this is one reason why she is always beautiful, because always in harmony. Besides, she has very many good points, many positive charms still left. Her figure is still good--not slim and slender certainly, but round and soft, and with that slower, riper, lazier grace which, quite different from the antelope-like elasticity of youth, is in its own way as lovely. If her hair has lost its maiden luxuriance she makes up with crafty arrangements of lace, which are more picturesque than the fashionable wisp of hay-like ends tumbling half-way to the waist. She has still her white and shapely hands with their pink filbert-like nails; still her pleasant smile and square small teeth--those one or two new, matching so perfectly with the old as to be undiscoverable! Her eyes are bright yet, and if the upper muscles are a little shrunk, the consequent apparent enlargement of the orbit only makes them more expressive; her lips are not yet withered; her skin is not wrinkled. Undeniably, when well-dressed and in a favourable light, the mature siren is as beautiful in her own way as the girlish belle; and the world knows it and acknowledges it. That mature sirens can be passionately loved, even when very mature, history gives us more than one example; and the first name that naturally occurs to one's mind is that of the too famous Ninon de l'Enclos. And Ninon, if a trifle mythical, was yet a fact and an example. But not going quite to Ninon's age, we often see women of forty and upwards who are personally charming, and whom men love with as much warmth and tenderness as if they were in the heyday of life--women who count their admirers by dozens, and who end by making a superb marriage, and having quite an Indian summer of romance and happiness. The young laugh at this idea of the Indian summer for a bride of forty-five; but it is true; for neither romance nor happiness, neither love nor mental youth, is a matter of years; and after all we are only as old as we feel, and certainly no older than we look.