"Mischief,--mischief, where I meant only kindness! I sowed good seed, and reap thistles and brambles! My charity-cake turns out miserable dough! But how could I possibly foresee that the child would be such a simpleton? What right has she to be so unnecessarily interested in my brother, who is old enough to have been her father? It is unnatural, absurd, and altogether unpardonable in Salome to be guilty of such presumptuous nonsense; and, of course, it is not in the least my fault, for the possibility of this piece of mischief never once occurred to me! True, she is as old as Ulpian's mother was when father married her; but then Mrs. Grey was not at all in love with her white-haired husband, and had set her affections solely on that Mercer-Street house, with marble steps and plate-glass windows. How do I know that, after all, Salome is not in love with Ulpian's fortune instead of the dear boy's blue eyes, and handsome hair, and splendid teeth? However, I ought not to think so harshly of the child, for I have no cause to consider her calculating and selfish. Poor thing! if she really cares for him there are breakers ahead of her, for I am sure that he is as far from falling in love with her as I would be with the ghost of my great-grandfather's uncle. Thank Providence, all this troublesome, mischievous, Lucifer machinery of love and marriage is shut out of heaven, where we shall be as the angels are. Ah, Salome! I fear you are a giddy young idiot, and that I am a blind old imbecile, and I wish from the bottom of my heart you had never darkened my doors." The quiet current of Miss Jane's secluded life had never been ruffled by a serious _affaire du coeur_; consequently she indulged little charity towards those episodes, which displayed what she considered the most humiliating weakness of her sex. While puzzling over the best method of extricating her _protegee_ from the snare into which she was disposed to apprehend that her own well-meant but mistaken kindness had betrayed her, she saw an unsealed note lying beneath the table, and, by the aid of her crutch, drew it within reach of her fingers. A small sheet of paper, carelessly folded and addressed to Salome, merely contained these words,-- "I congratulate you, my young friend, on the correctness of your French themes, which I leave in the drawer of the library-table. When I return I will examine those prepared during my absence; and, in the interim, remain, "Very respectfully, "ULPIAN GREY." Miss Jane wiped her glasses, and read the note twice; then held it between her thumb and third finger, and debated the expediency of changing its destination. Her delicate sense of honor revolted at the first suggestion of interference, but an intense aversion to "love-scrapes" finally strengthened her prudential inclination to crush this one in its incipiency; and she deliberately tore the paper into shreds, which she tossed out of the window.