Such reflections are but too common with the young rakes of all times; Robin-a-Ree acted upon them, and he was not long in producing an effect upon Mary Lee. He spoke to her at first merely as the daughter of the fisherman; putting questions to her, which he could himself have answered—but, while he was apparently a careless interrogator, he did all in his power, by the shew of his properties, to become a querist of a heart which had hitherto been left to question itself, and to answer its own questions. How few young women can withstand the graces of a handsome youth—and how often is the poison drunk by the heart, before the mind is conscious of the draught! Mary Lee thought, as she looked upon the youthful Ashley, that the young fishermen of Fairhaven were surely not made of the same flesh and blood. Ashley knew the force of his natural endowments, and he brought in aid of those the flatteries of the deceiver. What more is required to complete the work of love? A good regard of the flatterer, followed by a good regard of the flattered, is, alas! often all that is necessary in the composition of female devotion. The frequent meetings which Robin had with Mary produced the usual effects. Her heart was what every woman’s ought to be—that is, if there were no bad men in the world—it loved at once and for ever. Every pulse of life acknowledged the power which had come like a spirit and thrown a charm over her existence; the world was now centred in one object; her father and her home lost their magic influences of early associations; even the shade of her mother, which was enshrined in her imagination as a part of the mind itself, faded into a thinner existence than even that of a vision, as she revelled in the first enthusiastic enjoyment of maiden affection. Ashley saw with delight, mixed with some misgivings as to the responsibility of such a devotion, the absolute resignation of a full and bursting heart to the dissembled schemes of a professed libertine. Proud of his victory, he paused, like the cruel lord of the jungle, to play with the victim destined to a protracted immolation; and she, deluded creature! received, with panting eagerness, the caresses which she considered the fruit of a love equal to her own. As she hung upon his bosom and fed his eyes with the soft beams of a first love, shining through tears of kindness and devotion, who could have observed, in that light, more danger than belongs to so innocent a thing as a woman’s smile? Robert Ashley had known by experience, that a woman’s eye that does not shine on her seducer, generally shines not at all, unless it be in the phosphorescent brightness of the corruption of the grave. Mary Lee was, like other women, an object to be possessed, not feared; Ashley enjoyed her present devotion in the exultation of pride, and her subsequent ruin in a certain hope of reality.