ding novels in secret.

At first I tried some of the famous English works, published at a price
within the reach of small purses. Very well written, no doubt--but with
one unpardonable drawback, so far as I am concerned. Our celebrated
native authors address themselves to good people, or to penitent people
who want to be made good; not to wicked readers like me.

Arriving at this conclusion, I tried another experiment. In a small
bookseller's shop I discovered some cheap translations of French novels.
Here, I found what I wanted--sympathy with sin. Here, there was
opened to me a new world inhabited entirely by unrepentant people; the
magnificent women diabolically beautiful; the satanic men dead to
every sense of virtue, and alive--perhaps rather dirtily alive--to the
splendid fascinations of crime. I know now that Love is above everything
but itself. Love is the one law that we are bound to obey. How deep!
how consoling! how admirably true! The novelists of England have reason
indeed to hide their heads before the novelists of France. All that
I have felt, and have written here, is inspired by these wonderful
authors.

I have relieved my mind, and may now return to the business of my
diary--the record of domestic events.

An overwhelming disappointment has fallen on Eunice. Our dinner-party
has been put off.

The state of father's health is answerable for this change in our
arrangements. That wretched scene at the school, complicated by my
sister's undutiful behavior at the time, so seriously excited him that
he passed a sleepless night, and kept his bedroom throughout the day.
Eunice's total want of discretion added, no doubt, to his sufferings:
she rudely intruded on him to express her regret and to ask his pardon.
Having carried her point, she was at leisure to come to me, and to ask
(how amazingly simple of her!) what she and Philip were to do next.

"We had arranged it all so nicely," the poor wretch began. "Philip was
to have been so clever and agreeable at dinner, and was to have chosen
his time so very discreetly, that papa would have been ready to listen
to anything he said. Oh, we should have succeeded; I haven't a doubt of
it! Our only hope, Helena, is in you. What are we to do now?"

"Wait," I answered.

"Wait?" she repeated, hotly. "Is my heart to be broken? and, what is
more cruel still, is Philip to be disappointed? I expected something
more sensible, my dear, from you. What possible reason ca