iments addressed to him, would have done honour
to the most accomplished coquette. Both my male chaperons were subjected
greatly to these seductive influences, and both acquitted themselves
with wonderful honour to their tact and self-control.

I said to the elder son, who preferred mechanical employments to
the management of a great property, and who was of an eminently
philosophical temperament,--"I find it difficult to conceive how at your
age, and with all the intoxicating effects on the senses, of music and
lights and perfumes, you can be so cold to that impassioned young Gy who
has just left you with tears in her eyes at your cruelty."

The young An replied with a sigh, "Gentle Tish, the greatest misfortune
in life is to marry one Gy if you are in love with another."

"Oh! You are in love with another?"

"Alas! Yes."

"And she does not return your love?"

"I don't know. Sometimes a look, a tone, makes me hope so; but she has
never plainly told me that she loves me."

"Have you not whispered in her own ear that you love her?"

"Fie! What are you thinking of? What world do you come from? Could I so
betray the dignity of my sex? Could I be so un-Anly--so lost to shame,
as to own love to a Gy who has not first owned hers to me?"

"Pardon: I was not quite aware that you pushed the modesty of your sex
so far. But does no An ever say to a Gy, 'I love you,' till she says it
first to him?"

"I can't say that no An has ever done so, but if he ever does, he is
disgraced in the eyes of the Ana, and secretly despised by the Gy-ei.
No Gy, well brought up, would listen to him; she would consider that
he audaciously infringed on the rights of her sex, while outraging the
modesty which dignifies his own. It is very provoking," continued the
An, "for she whom I love has certainly courted no one else, and I cannot
but think she likes me. Sometimes I suspect that she does not court me
because she fears I would ask some unreasonable settlement as to the
surrender of her rights. But if so, she cannot really love me, for where
a Gy really loves she forgoes all rights."

"Is this young Gy present?"

"Oh yes. She sits yonder talking to my mother."

I looked in the direction to which my eyes were thus guided, and saw
a Gy dressed in robes of bright red, which among this people is a sign
that a Gy as yet prefers a single state. She wears gray, a neutral tint,
to indicate that she is looking about for a spouse; dark purple if