ohn Ardworth," and the low voice
swelled in its volume, "you are bold, able, and aspiring; for this,
I love you,--love you almost--almost as a mother. Your fate," she
continued hurriedly, "interests me; your energies inspire me with
admiration. Often I sit here for hours, musing over your destiny to be,
so that at times I may almost say that in your life I live."

Ardworth looked embarrassed, and with an awkward attempt at compliment
he began, hesitatingly: "I should think too highly of myself if I could
really believe that you--"

"Tell me," interrupted Madame Dalibard,--"we have had many conversations
upon grave and subtle matters; we have disputed on the secret mysteries
of the human mind; we have compared our several experiences of outward
life and the mechanism of the social world,--tell me, then, and frankly,
what do you think of me? Do you regard me merely as your sex is apt to
regard the woman who aspires to equal men,--a thing of borrowed phrases
and unsound ideas, feeble to guide, and unskilled to teach; or do you
recognize in this miserable body a mind of force not unworthy yours,
ruled by an experience larger than your own?"

"I think of you," answered Ardworth, frankly, "as the most remarkable
woman I have ever met. Yet--do not be angry--I do not like to yield
to the influence which you gain over me when we meet. It disturbs my
convictions, it disquiets my reason; I do not settle back to my life so
easily after your breath has passed over it."

"And yet," said Lucretia, with a solemn sadness in her voice, "that
influence is but the natural power which cold maturity exercises on
ardent youth. It is my mournful ad vantage over you that disquiets your
happy calm. It is my experience that unsettles the fallacies which you
name 'convictions.' Let this pass. I asked your opinion of me, because
I wished to place at your service all that knowledge of life which I
possess. In proportion as you esteem me you will accept or reject my
counsels."

"I have benefited by them already. It is the tone that you advised me
to assume that gave me an importance I had not before with that old
formalist whose paper I serve, and whose prejudices I shock; it is to
your criticisms that I owe the more practical turn of my writings, and
the greater hold they have taken on the public."

"Trifles indeed, these," said Madame Dalibard, with a half smile. "Let
them at least induce you to listen to me if I propose to make your path
mo