You, my friend, with your quick, impulsive, and, allow me to say, meaningless expression of admiration, received simply the rebuke which you deserved. Then there was an end of that, and Miss Thompson, being somewhat used to such misadventures, thought but little of it afterwards. She has to do those things when the necessity comes upon her. But it does happen, sometimes, that the unprotected female,--who has a heart, though other women will say that she has none,--is touched, and listens, and hopes, and at last almost thinks that she has found out her mistake. The cold exterior glaze of the woman is pricked through, and there comes a scratch upon the stuff beneath. A tone in her voice will quaver as though everything were not easy with her. She will forget for the moment her prudence, and the usual precautions of her life, and will dream of retiring within the ordinary pale of womanhood. She will think that to cease to be an unprotected female may be sweet, and for a while she will be soft, and weak, and wavering. But with unprotected females such ideas have to pass away very fleetly. I am afraid it must be said that let a woman once be an unprotected female, so she must remain to the end. Who knows the man that has taken an unprotected female to his bosom and made her the mistress of his home, and the chief priestess of his household gods? And if any man have done so, what have his friends said of him and his adventure? And so the unprotected female goes on wandering still farther afield, increasing in cleverness every year, and ever acquiring new knowledge; but increasing also in hardness, and in that glaze of which I have spoken, till at last one is almost driven to confess, when one's wife and daughters declare her to be an old soldier, that one's wife and daughters are not in justice liable to contradiction. THE UNITED ENGLISHMEN WHO TRAVEL FOR FUN.