She had had experiences with the male sex, this Miss Dorothy so prim and grim.

It was whispered that her heart was a tattered album scrawled over with love-lines, but that she had shut up the volume long ago.
There was a tradition that she had been crossed in love; but it was the faintest of traditions.

A gay young lieutenant of marines had flirted with her at a country ball (A.D.

1811), and then marched carelessly away at the head of his company to the shrill music of the fife, without so much as a sigh for the girl he left behind him.

The years rolled on, the gallant gay Lothario--which wasn't his name--married, became a father, and then a grandfather; and at the period of which I am speaking his grandchild was actually one of Miss Dorothy's young ladies.