A GAME AT COQUETRY.

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BY THE AUTHOR OF THE REFORMER."

"WELL, Fred!"

"Well, Frank !"

These were the first salutations of two intimate friends, yclept Frederick Markham and Francis Lyttleton Winchester.

"Well, and how da?" lisped out the last-named gentleman. "How does it fit? How does the dose smell? How does your pulse beat? Have you got a palpitation of the heart? Does your head ache?"

"Psha! I did not send for my physician!"

"Physician? no! He takes the body, I the mind; which hath the better bargain? I inquired after the symp-toms of your corporeal frame, that I might ascertain the state of the incorporeal. You, mundane that you are, carried your thoughts no higher than the acceleration or stupefaction of the sanguinary tides. I judged by the tides of the moon of your brains-by your brains of your heart-by your heart of the lady.”

"Could you not have asked a straightforward question ?"

"Of a third person, but not of the principals in a matrimonial affair. Why, a man warmly in love would have construed, or rather misconstrued, a question into a doubt, a doubt into an insult, an insult into a challenge, a challenge into a bullet, and a bullet-O, ye fates! into my heart, and all because of an indiscreet question. No, Fred, no; I am wiser than that. For want of a nail, the shoe was lost-for want of a shoe, the horse was lostfor want of a horse, the rider was lost, and all for wantno, Fred, no. I have just introduced a new mode for my

hair, which has taken; and, as it is in the first blush of the new fashion, I am not willing that a single curl should be shaken by a mistimed argument, though it should have all the weight of-lead."

"As ridiculous as ever!"

"I flatter myself a little more so-I am improving. Remember that there is no standing still, and I would not willingly retrograde. Besides, absurdity, or eccentricity, which is the same thing, is the very charm of life, which the world runs after most vehemently. People can choose whether they will care or not for such a wise, sterling, profound, serious, fellow as you; but they have no choice, they are irresistibly impelled to follow my folly, to rush after me through bog, over briar, till the ignis fatuus has led them-he himself knows not whither.'

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Well, but wise, serious people, such as you are pleased to designate your poor friend, sometimes follow these will-o'-the-wisps quite as foolishly, and sometimes more fatally, than they who with a light heart have also a light pair of heels to escape again."

Ah! and a sigh-suspicious Fred!"

"Was there ever a day in man's life when a sigh, perhaps breathed by memory, perhaps by anticipation, might not emanate from the heart?"

"These sighs are serious things. Come, I see I must resume my medical character. A sigh-that is, a lengthened inspiration of the breath, followed by a lengthened expiration rather curious that a sort of difficulty in breathing should have any connexion with the delicate embarrassments of the heart."

"A lengthened inspiration!-what treason, Frank, thus to vulgarise the sentiment of a sigh."

"Oh! we, that is, we men, know the value of a sigh. I would not depreciate it for the world-but then it must be breathed into the ears of a lady. Sighs are thrown away upon me; mere trash, bombast, nonsense, folly." "And mine?"

"It was forgetfulness-or you mistook me for your mistress."

"It was not forgetfulness, it was remembrance." "Then must I renew my investigation. Now, look me

full in the face-there-gravely-that is grave enoughalmost too gravely. Now answer all my interrogations." "Well, I am nothing loath."

"Are you in disgrace with your mistress ?"

"No."

"That is bad. You had better have had a quarrel. I would advise you to make it into a quarrel. It is much easier to pass from storm to sunshine, from Indus to the Pole,' than from indifferent dulness into grace and favour. Make a quarrel of it, Fred."

"How shall I manage it?"

"What a question! None but a dolt could have asked it. Tell her that her lapdog is an ugly bore."

"That would be true."

"Then you must not utter it. Be sure that in your anger you never, on any provocation, speak the truth. Be as bitter as you will. Be a very Brougham in satire -a very Wellington in ire; call your antagonist every vile and wretched thing on earth, only taking care to exceed or overleap the truth, and there need not exist the slightest obstacle to the renewal of the warmest friendship. But, oh! once utter a truth, sterling and immutable, and you shall find that the anger it generates shall be as imperishable as truth itself. It is on this principle that men who vituperate to-day shake hands to-morrow. There has been nothing but clack, and clamour, and the brazen note of war, but not an arrow shot; the sounds die away in the air, and leave no festering wound."

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Then, must I leave the lapdog unassailed ?"

"It is a doubtful point; she might not identify the little tassel with herself, and then she might forgive: but, again, as the little cupid is, doubtless, a little love, and the selection of her own most seraphic taste, to vilify the one might be to impugn the other. Upon the whole, I think you had better intimate to her that she squints."

"That she squints !"

"Ay, I suppose at least that that is not veritable truth,

or else, oh! for a lament on your taste! That, therefore, she might forgive."

"But, suppose only for a moment that I would rather choose disgrace than favour-banishment than presence." "That is difficult to suppose."

"And wherefore?"

"Because Mr. Frederick Markham professes to be a man of principle and honour, consistent withal, and he is here on the point of marriage. The lady is ready, her friends are willing, settlements are made out, jewels bought, dresses selected, carriages in readiness, and the whole of the lady's five hundred dear friends waiting anxiously to congratulate her on the acquisition of a new name and a new appendage to it. And these are the smallest parts of the preparations; a greater is that the bridegroom's old, sage, and steady schoolfellow and friend has had some extremely scientific garments cast to his Adonis mould, and has submitted to be whirled a hundred and so many miles, to the danger of his curls and the fatality of his cravat, to honour the august ceremony with his presence. And are not these reasons enough to forbid his supposing that the matrimonial yea could be converted into a nay, and that too through the versatility of his ca pricious friend? Why, I tell you, Fred, that you have usurped my character; caprice is all my own, and I shall resent the robbery."

"I know all that you would imply. I know that these changeful feelings are poor, pitiful, dishonourable! It is only to your ear that I would breathe them, for you are most truly my steady friend. I tell you, Frank, that I loathe myself! My boasted discernment is no better worth than the sight of the blind, or the wisdom of the idiot! I, who prided myself on my solidity of character, and my just appreciation of the worth of others -I, who thought man could not deceive, nor woman delude me, have not only entangled myself, but committed the fatal folly of violating my own natural rights of liberty, of selling my birthright for a mess of pottage !" "Order! order, Fred!"

"Ay, it's folly, too rank. But, when I think that I am

in the toils of a heartless coquette, I may be permitted to rave a little in my net."

"Rave, by all means; you had better let the fit take its course till it shall have spent itself; you only protract by striving to suppress."

"I have done."

"Then that is the precise point at which I wish you to begin. Now, tell me how you, who were so orthodox a lover, have all at once become infected with this heresy."

"I will tell you. Simply because, when I had utterly committed myself, the lady took no further pains to support her fictitious character. She, who was once soft as sighing Eve, downcast, modest, diffident, now speaks with the loudest, boldest utterance. The eye that a month ago dared not meet mine now actually stares me out of countenance."

"And so you fell in love with a lady because she shut her eyes, and you have now fallen out of love because she has opened them again!"

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Frank, I tell you plainly that on this subject I cannot bear raillery. I loved her, at least I thought that I loved her, because her beauty attracted me, and her apparent softness and sensibility ensnared me. I cannot tell you what pains I was at to subdue everything like ruggedness in myself in my approach to her, and how I strove to adapt my mind to the imagined image of her purity-and all the while she had a hackneyed heart and feelings, from which the blush and the brightness had all passed away, and she was scorning me for the very sanctity of my devotion!"

"Very pleasant, Fred, to a Quixotic sentimentalist like yourself. What excellent fools you men of sense make! I suppose after all this you are going to whistle her off.” "And be as much rogue as fool! I thought you had known me better."

"And so you sacrifice yourself, all that you are and all that you might have been, to a coquette ?"

"No, I sacrifice myself to my own humour." "For the sake of consistency."

"For the sake of honourable consistency."

But, as you find that the lady you propose to marry