isinterestedness,
intemperately indulged in, could take on the form of selfishness.

Simon went to Sally, and said: "Tell me what all this means." But
Sally, weak now in her very strength, said: "Nothing! Let my ways be
my own ways still; I alone am answerable for them. Is 'believing and
waiting' so hard to do? I did not send for you."

Then Simon conceived a tremendous _coup de coeur_, a daring one
enough, as women go,--women of such stuff as the Sally Wimples of
this world are made of. He said, "I will try the old trick, the
foolish old trick that I always despised, but which must have
something sound in it, after all, since it has served the turn,
through all time, of people in my predicament." So Simon went over
(not with his heart,--trust him!--but with his legs) to Adelaide
Splurge. Miss Wimple, never guessing, saw him go, and made no sign,
though her heart fairly cracked: "He will return one day," she
thought; "if it be too late then, so much the better for him, perhaps."

Of Adelaide, the town had begun, some time since, to say, that she
had tired of Philip Withers,--that she did not appreciate him, could
not understand him,--he was too deep for her. Foolish town! She had
only found him out, and learned to hate him as fiercely as she
despised him unutterably. She had truly loved the man, and her shrewd
heart had played the detective for his Madeline secret.

For such a Fouche a slighter clue would have sufficed to lead to the
conviction of so besotted a traitor, than many an incautious hint of
his, and many a tale-telling vaunt of his irresistible egotism,
afforded her; for, like all the weak wretches of his sort, there was
not a more bungling lout, to try the patience of a clever man, than
Philip Withers, when his game lay between his safety and his vanity.

To Adelaide's hand Simon Blount came timely and well-trained. At once
she set him on Withers, as one would hie on a good dog at a thief;
and it was not long before she had the pleasure of seeing the chase
brought to the ground.

Withers had heard of a graceful neck, and white, dimpled shoulders,
at the Athenaeum; so accomplished a connoisseur as he must not let
them pass unappreciated. So he hastened to discharge his duty to
aesthetic society by honoring them with his admiration and exalting
patronage. On any transparent pretext,--the more transparent the
better, he thought, for the proprietress of the white shoulders and
the bewitching shape, who "n