Agneta Stanhope was not a born coquette, but she had been taught to estimate at their proper value all her advantages, whether natural or acquired. She was well aware, in this her girlhood, that they were the weapons with which she was to cut her way to fortune—the only fortune which could possibly await a well-born, fairly attractive girl of her rank, who had no portion beyond what served for her slender allowance of pocket-money, though she had influential friends, who could at least lead her into the arena where she was to secure a creditable establishment, or prove a failure and remain a poor relation to the end of her days. There was an obligation on Agneta’s part, to herself as well as to her kindred, for the future in addition to the present, to be agreeable, to charm men—that she might grow skilful in the art of war, that she might not only smite down one antagonist, but overthrow the foe by sixes and tens, so as to have several suitors to pick and choose from, with the greater chance of escaping the collapse of a _mauvais parti_ for a husband. Certainly, the prevailing burden of her first, and all her succeeding unmarried seasons, still sat lightly on Agneta Stanhope, yet she was not without a latent, pervading sense of it, which caused her, in very sport, to polish and poise her spear, and essay it against any natural enemy, let him be ever so far beyond the pale of her claims and requirements. Thus, Agneta, out of a kind of womanly instinct, though one not known to the higher order of women, set herself, with her eyes open, to please Oliver Constable, to beguile him into making it his main object to please her, and into sliding imperceptibly into platonically romantic and tender relations with her. Undoubtedly, Agneta was not so well acquainted with human nature as to anticipate any danger of scorching her own wings in the process of consuming the heart of another, far less to measure the degree of injury and suffering which might be involved in that same casual scorching of her fairy queen and butterfly attributes. But though she had been wise beyond her years and before her time, such wisdom would not have sufficed to arrest her in her course. Her latent high spirits, which became her antecedents, had survived her lifetime of discipline. In the dire necessity of subjugating men till they became her open or secret lovers, she would have said, laughing with good-natured mockery, at the most distant suspicion of such a peril, ‘if my wings are to be scorched, let them. I shall survive to flutter them as bravely as ever, till they are confined by a marriage ring. I must have Mr. Constable think me nice—the nicest girl he has ever known.’