magnanimity, they do not and cannot
understand. Never turn them the other cheek, but give a smart slap back
again. It will do them good.

The daughter was a very pretty, artificial, silly girl, who might have
been very amiable in a different position, and was not ill-natured as it
was. I might have liked her very well, if she had not conceived such a
wonderful liking for me, and hugged and kissed me as much as she did.
She cooed, too, and I dislike to hear a woman coo; it is a sure mark of
inferiority.

We were quite intimate soon, and Miss Lucy fell into the habit of coming
early in the morning to ride with me, and after dinner to sit and sew,
and after tea for a walk. She showed me all her heart, apparently,
though there was not much of it, and vowed that she scarcely knew how
she should exist without me. I let her play at liking me, just as I
should have indulged a playful kitten, and tried to say and do something
that might improve her for Mr. Ames's sake. I saw now what his skeleton
was. He was to marry the poor child, and shrunk from it as I should have
shrunk from a shallow husband.

He used to come with her sometimes, and I must confess that he behaved
admirably. I never saw him in the least rude, or ill-natured, or
contemptuous towards her, even when she was silliest and tried his
patience most severely; and I felt my respect for him increasing every
day. As for Mrs. Winslow, she came sometimes to see me, and was very
particular to invite me there; but I saw that she watched both me and
Mr. Ames, and suspected that she had come to Huntsville for that
purpose. She sought every opportunity, too, of making me seem awkward or
ignorant before him; and he perceived it, I know, and was mortified and
annoyed by it, though he left the chastisement entirely to me. Once in a
while Cousin Mary and I had a real old-fashioned visit from him all
alone, either when it was very stormy, or when the ladies were visiting
elsewhere. He always came serious and abstracted, and went away in good
spirits, and he said that those few hours were the pleasantest he
passed. Mrs. Winslow looked on them with an evil eye, I knew, and
suspected a great deal of which we were all innocent; for one day, when
she had been dining at my house with her daughter, and we were all out
in the garden together, I overheard her saying,--

"She is just the person to captivate him, and you mustn't bring yourself
into competition with her, Lucy. She can ou