except when she makes some slighting mention of him for not sending her money enough: what is the effect of all this upon the men? The foreigners; there are plenty of them here every season; I wonder there are so few this time: instead of one decent Frenchman like Le Roi, you usually find half-a-dozen disreputable ones; Englishmen many, not always of the best sort; Germans, Russians, and Spaniards, occasionally: they all are inclined to look upon her--especially considering her belligerent attitude towards the rest of the female population--as something _tres legere_, and to attempt to go a little too far with her. Then she puts them down fast enough, and they in spite say things about her, the discredit of which extends to our ladies generally--in short, she exposes the country before foreigners. Then for the natives, she catches some poor boy just loose upon the world, dances with, flatters him--for she has a knack of flattering people without seeming to do so, especially by always appearing to take an interest in what is said to her,--keeps him dangling about her for a while; then some day he says or does something to make a fool of himself, and she extinguishes him. The man gets a check of this sort at his entry into society that is enough to make him a misogynist for life. And the little scenes that she used to get up last summer with married men, just to make their wives jealous!" "Which, I suppose, is the reason none of your wives will let you speak to her?" said Ashburner, who began to feel, he hardly knew why, a sentiment of partisanship for Mrs. Harrison. "But granting that her face, as you describe it, is an index of her character, I should draw from that exactly the opposite inference. I believe that the women who make mischief in the way you mention are your unsensuous and passionless ones--that the perfect flirt, single or married, must be a perfectly cold woman, because it is only one of such a temperament who can thus trifle with others without danger to herself. I speak hesitatingly, for all women are a mystery, and my experience is as yet very limited; but such opportunities of observation as have fallen to my lot confirm me in the theory." Somewhat to Ashburner's surprise his friend made no attempt to controvert his argument. He only turned it aside, saying,---- "Well, I don't like her, at any rate. If I had no other reason, the way she talks of her husband would be enough to make me." "Oh, there _is_ a Mr. Harrison, then? One hears so little of him----" "And sees so nothing of him, you may say." "Exactly--that I took him for a mythological personage--a cousin of our Mrs. Harris."