Yes, Miss Singleton would require a very clever, strong, and determined man to bring her into matrimonial harmony now. She has acquired too much of the habit of self-reliance and self-assertion; a long course of fruitless flirtation, in which she has fenced both with experts and with amateurs, has caused her to assume towards men always an attitude of defiant defence, besides, the restlessness born of an unsatisfied life has become chronic with her. She is never content to remain at home: her craving for amusement and excitement is unceasing, and strangers rather than those who belong to her home-circle always claim her first attention. However charming and amusing she may be in society, at home she keeps everything in a ferment, and she is contented with nothing. She domineers over her parents, as well as over her brothers and sisters, her cousins, and intimate friends. She captiously criticises whatever they do, and wishes to rearrange and direct everything. She is jealous of her relatives and friends who marry, though she constantly avers that nothing would ever induce her to take unto herself a husband, that the idea of a woman giving up her personal independence and freedom to a man is absolutely repulsive to her, while she professes a sort of contemptuous pity for all those who do voluntarily fall into this degrading condition. “Marriage is a snare for the weak-minded, and a delusion for fools,” she will tell you, and she will pretend that she believes it. But it was not always so. When I first knew Kate Singleton she was a bright, sympathetic girl of eighteen, and I envied the man who should some day call her his wife. She had certainly both will and character, but these were tempered by true womanly sensibility, and a good and magnanimous man’s love might have helped her to develop into a delightful woman and an excellent wife. Unfortunately, however, the romantic element in her nature was appealed to by the fascinations of a man who was not good, though he understood women’s weaknesses fatally well, and knew how to simulate the qualities that would most readily appeal to any particular girl. The cynical would perhaps excuse him with that cheap and common plea which covers so much of the wrong done in this world: “He was no worse than other men.” He had certainly committed no crime; only he had lived fast, perhaps a little faster than most men of his age. But he was a handsome young man, with a very engaging manner, a generous income, and many temptations; so, of course, it did not take him long to spend his patrimony, though he enjoyed its full value in luxurious pastimes and dissipation. Then, having nothing but debts and a rake’s reputation to his name, he endeavoured to make matrimonial capital out of his good looks and personal fascination. He met Kate Singleton, whose father he had understood would give her a handsome dowry, and perceiving the vulnerable place in her affections, he appealed to her sympathies