or the last time, complains that
you have mistaken her cruelly, and that she has meant nothing more than
any one else might mean; and what can she do to repair her mistake? Love
you? marry you? No; she is engaged to your rival, who counts his
thousands to your hundreds; and what a pity that you had not seen this
all along, and that you should have so misunderstood her! Besides, what
is there about her that you or any one should love?

Of all the many affectations of women, this affectation of their own
harmlessness when beautiful, and of their innocence of design when they
practice their arts for the discomfiture of men, is the most dangerous
and the most disastrous. But what can one say to them? The very fact
that they are dangerous disarms a man's anger and blinds his perception
until too late. That men love though they suffer is the woman's triumph,
guilt, and condonation; and so long as the trick succeeds it will be
practiced.

Another affectation of the same family is the extreme friendliness and
familiarity which some women adopt in their manners towards men. Young
girls affect an almost maternal tone to boys of their own age, or a year
or so older; and they, too, when their wiser elders remonstrate, declare
they mean nothing, and how hard it is that they may not be natural. This
form of affectation, once begun, continues through life, being too
convenient to be lightly discarded; and youthful matrons not long out of
their teens assume a tone and ways that would about befit middle age
counselling giddy youth, and that might by chance be dangerous even then
if the "Indian summer" was specially bright and warm.

Then there is the affectation pure and simple, which is the mere
affectation of manner, such as is shown in the drawling voice, the
mincing gait, the extreme gracefulness of attitude that by consciousness
ceases to be grace, and the thousand little _minauderies_ and coquetries
of the sex known to us all. And there is the affectation which people of
a higher social sphere show when they condescend to those of low estate,
and talk and look as if they were not quite certain of their company,
and scarcely knew if they were Christian or heathen, savage or
civilized. And there is the affectation of the maternal passion with
women who are never by any chance seen with their children, but who
speak of them as if they were never out of their sight; the affectation
of wifely adoration with women who are to be met ab