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 fair Ænigma? Tell me, and I will fashion my credulity to your commands. But I only hear of you with Mrs. Maple; I only see you with Mrs. Ireton! Mrs. Maple, having weaker parts, may have less power, scientifically, to torment than Mrs. Ireton; but nature has been as active in personifying ill will with the one, as art in embellishing spite with the other. They are equally egotists, equally wrapt up in themselves, and convinced that self alone is worth living for in this nether world. What a fate! To pass from Maple to Ireton, was to fall from Scylla to Charybdis!"

The blush of Juliet manifested extreme confusion, to see herself represented, even though it might be in sport, as a professional parasite. Reading, with concern, in her countenance, the pain which he had caused her, he exclaimed, "Sweet witch! loveliest syren!—let me hasten to develope a project, inspired, I must hope, by my better genius! Tell me but, frankly, who and what you are, and then—"