tune had been very hard upon Augusta
Mildmay. Early in her career she had fallen in love, while abroad, with
an Italian nobleman, and had immediately been carried off home by her
anxious parents. Then in London she had fallen in love again with an
English nobleman, an eldest son, with wealth of his own. Nothing could
be more proper, and the young man had fallen also in love with her. All
her friends were beginning to hate her with virulence, so lucky had she
been! When on a sudden, the young lord told her that the match would
not please his father and mother, and that therefore there must be an
end of it. What was there to be done! All London had talked of it; all
London must know the utter failure. Nothing more cruel, more barefaced,
more unjust had ever been perpetrated. A few years since all the
Mildmays in England, one after another, would have had a shot at the
young nobleman. But in these days there seems to be nothing for a girl
to do but to bear it and try again. So Augusta Mildmay bore it and did
try again; tried very often again. And now she was in love with Jack De
Baron. The worst of Guss Mildmay was that, through it all, she had a
heart and would like the young men,--would like them, or perhaps
dislike them, equally to her disadvantage. Old gentlemen, such as was
Mr. Houghton, had been willing to condone all her faults, and all her
loves, and to take her as she was. But when the moment came, she would
not have her Houghton, and then she was in the market again. Now a
young woman entering the world cannot make a greater mistake than not
to know her own line, or, knowing it, not to stick to it. Those who are
thus weak are sure to fall between two stools. If a girl chooses to
have a heart, let her marry the man of her heart, and take her mutton
chops and bread and cheese, her stuff gown and her six children, as
they may come. But if she can decide that such horrors are horrid to
her, and that they must at any cost be avoided, then let her take her
Houghton when he comes, and not hark back upon feelings and fancies,
upon liking and loving, upon youth and age. If a girl has money and
beauty too, of course she can pick and choose. Guss Mildmay had no
money to speak of, but she had beauty enough to win either a working
barrister or a rich old sinner. She was quite able to fall in love with
the one and flirt with the other at the same time; but when the moment
for decision came, she could not bring herself to put up