members of your family may not fully
understand. If you were younger, Sylvia, you might do a good deal of
this and not be hurt by it; or you might not be hurt by it if you were
a good deal older; but at your age it is terrible; in time it will
affect your character."

"How old must I be?" said Sylvia, wickedly.

"Well, in your case," I replied, warmly, a little nettled by her tone,
"you'd better abstain altogether."

"And in your case?" said Sylvia.

"You never mind my case!" I retorted.

"But I do mind it when I suffer by it," said Sylvia. "I do mind it if
it's going to affect my character!"

"You know very well, Sylvia," I replied, "that I never kissed you but
three times, and then as a brother."

"I do not wish any one but my brother to kiss me in that way," said
Sylvia, with a pout of contempt.

It seemed to me that this was a fitting time to guide Sylvia's powers
of discrimination as to the way she should act with indifferent
men--and as to the way that different men would try to act with her.

I had been talking to her in a low tone I do not know how long. Her
ill-nature had quickly vanished; she was, in her way, provoking,
charming. I was sitting close to her. The moonlight played upon her
daring, wilful face through the leaves of the grape-vines. It was
unpremeditated; my nature was, most probably, unstrung at the instant
by ungratified longings for Georgiana; but suddenly I bent down and
kissed her.

Instantly both Sylvia and I started from the seat. How long Georgiana
had been standing in the entrance to the arbor I do not know. She may
that instant have come. But there she was, dressed in white--pure,
majestic, with the moon shining behind her, and shedding about her the
radiance of a heavenly veil.

"Come, Sylvia," she said, with perfect sweetness; and, bidding me
good-night with the same gentlewoman's calm, she placed her arm about
the child's waist, and the two sisters passed slowly and silently out
of my garden.

At that moment, if I could have squeezed myself into the little
screech-owl perched in a corner of the arbor, I would gladly have crept
into the hollow of an oak and closed my eyes. Still, how was I to
foresee what I should do? A man's conversation may be his own; his
conduct may vibrate with the extinct movements of his ancestors.

Georgiana's behavior then was merely the forerunner of larger marvels.
For next morning I wrote a futile drastic treatise on Woman's inab