Lillie's life
now became a round of dressing, dancing, going to watering-places,
travelling, and in other ways seeking the fulfilment of her destiny.

She had precisely the accessible, easy softness of manner that leads
every man to believe that he may prove a favorite, and her run
of offers became quite a source of amusement. Her arrival at
watering-places was noted in initials in the papers; her dress on
every public occasion was described; and, as acknowledged queen of
love and beauty, she had everywhere her little court of men and women
flatterers. The women flatterers around a belle are as much a part of
the _cortege_ as the men. They repeat the compliments they hear, and
burn incense in the virgin's bower at hours when the profaner sex may
not enter.

The life of a petted creature consists essentially in being deferred
to, for being pretty and useless. A petted child runs a great risk, if
it is ever to outgrow childhood; but a pet woman is a perpetual child.
The pet woman of society is everybody's toy. Everybody looks at her,
admires her, praises and flatters her, stirs her up to play off her
little airs and graces for their entertainment; and passes on. Men of
profound sense encourage her to chatter nonsense for their
amusement, just as we delight in the tottering steps and stammering
mispronunciations of a golden-haired child. When Lillie has been in
Washington, she has had judges of the supreme court and secretaries
of state delighted to have her give her opinions in their respective
departments. Scholars and literary men flocked around her, to the
neglect of many a more instructed woman, satisfied that she knew
enough to blunder agreeably on every subject.

Nor is there any thing in the Christian civilization of our present
century that condemns the kind of life we are describing, as in any
respect unwomanly or unbecoming. Something very like it is in a
measure considered as the appointed rule of attractive young girls
till they are married.

Lillie had numbered among her admirers many lights of the Church. She
had flirted with bishops, priests, and deacons,--who, none of them,
would, for the world, have been so ungallant as to quote to her such
dreadful professional passages as, "She that liveth in pleasure is
dead while she liveth."

In fact, the clergy, when off duty, are no safer guides of attractive
young women than other mortal men; and Lillie had so often seen their
spiritual attentions degenera