Children usually regard these tardy inclinations of their parents with surprise, if not with downright distaste. Some little surprise the pretty Anna Updyke may have felt, when she was told by a venerable great-aunt that her mother was about to be married; but of distaste there was none. She had a strong regard for her new step-father, that was to be; and thought it the most natural thing in the world to love. Sooth to say, Anna Updyke had not been out two years—the American girls are brought out so young!—without having sundry suitors. Manhattan is the easiest place in the world for a pretty girl, with a good fortune, to get offers. Pretty girls with good fortunes are usually in request everywhere, but it requires the precise state of society that exists in the “Great _Commercial_ Emporium,” to give a young woman the highest chance in the old lottery. There, where one-half of the world came from other worlds some half a dozen years since; where a good old Manhattan name is regarded as upstart among a crowd that scarcely knows whence it was itself derived, and whither it is destined, and where few have any real position in society, and fewer still know what the true meaning of the term is, money and beauty are the constant objects of pursuit. Anna Updyke formed no exception. She had declined, in the gentlest manner possible, no less than six direct offers, coming from those who were determined to lose nothing by diffidence; had thrown cold water on more than twice that number of little flames that were just beginning to burn; and had thrown into the fire some fifteen or sixteen anonymous effusions, in prose and verse, that came from adventurers who could admire from a distance, at the opera and in the streets, but who had no present means of getting any nearer than these indirect attempts at communication. We say “thrown into the fire;” for Anna was too prudent, and had too much self-respect, to retain such documents, coming, as they did, from so many “Little Unknowns.” The anonymous effusions were consequently burnt—with one exception. The exception was in the case of a sonnet, in which her hair—and very beautiful it is—was the theme. From some of the little free-masonry of the intercourse of the sexes, Anna fancied these lines had been written by Jack Wilmeter, one of the most constant of her visiters, as well as one of her admitted favourites. Between Jack and Anna there had been divers passages of gallantry, which had been very kindly viewed by McBrain and the mother. The parties themselves did not understand their own feelings; for matters had not gone far, when Mary Monson so strangely appeared on the stage, and drew Jack off, on the trail of wonder and mystery, if not on that of real passion. As Sarah Wilmeter was the most intimate friend of Anna Updyke, it is not extraordinary that this singular fancy of the brother’s should be the subject of conversation between the two young women, each of whom