'What would you have me believe, fair AEnigma? Tell me, and I will fashion my credulity to your commands. But I only hear of you with Mrs Maple; I only see you with Mrs Ireton! Mrs Maple, having weaker parts, may have less power, scientifically, to torment than Mrs Ireton; but nature has been as active in personifying ill will with the one, as art in embellishing spite with the other. They are equally egotists, equally wrapt up in themselves, and convinced that self alone is worth living for in this nether world. What a fate! To pass from Maple to Ireton, was to fall from Scylla to Charybdis!' The blush of Juliet manifested extreme confusion, to see herself represented, even though it might be in sport, as a professional parasite. Reading, with concern, in her countenance, the pain which he had caused her, he exclaimed, 'Sweet witch! loveliest syren!--let me hasten to develope a project, inspired, I must hope, by my better genius! Tell me but, frankly, who and what you are, and then--' Juliet shook her head. 'Nay, nay, should your origin be the most obscure, I shall but think you more nearly allied to the gods! Jupiter, Apollo, and such like personages, delighted in a secret progeny. If, on the contrary, in sparkling correspondence with your eyes, it is brilliant, but has been clouded by fortune, how ravished shall I be to twirl round the wheels of that capricious deity, till they reach those dulcet regions, where beauty and merit are in harmony with wealth and ease! Tell me, then, what country first saw you bloom; what family originally reared you; by what name you made your first entrance into the world;--and I will turn your champion against all the spirits of the air, all the fiends of the earth, and all the monsters of the "vast abyss!" Leave, then, to such as need those goaders, the magnetism of mystery and wonder, and trust, openly and securely, to the charm of youth, the fascination of intelligence, the enchantment of grace, and the witchery of beauty!' Juliet was still silent.