Ah! and this was much more than mere giddiness; it was shamelessness, jealousy, hatred! Matilda could not forgive Fanny for avoiding her in the street, and the others could not pardon her for possessing a treasure which they possessed no longer--innocence! What a dish for the fine palate of a connoisseur! What a rare fruit of paradise! A child of fifteen or sixteen, whose diamond soul has been cleansed from mud and filth, who is still conscious of God, and capable of pure delights, whose tender loving heart, perhaps, is in the safekeeping of some honest, romantic youth--what a fine thing to root her up unmercifully, to tear off her budding leaves one by one, hurl her back again into the mire from which she has been plucked, and make her acquainted with that new, that withering, consuming fire of infernal passion begotten among the souls of the nether world! So the chase was let loose after the tender roe that had emerged from the garden of paradise.

Swarms of those knight-errants who have nothing else to do waylaid and accosted her in the streets and byways, and offered her their flattery, their homage, their gifts, but above the head of the fairy roe rested a star, which suffered not the darts of the huntsmen to hit their mark.

That star was the star of purity.
The discomfited youths, more and more angry every day, used to meet at the Meyers' and deride one another at the failure of their endeavours.
Very often, too, heavy bets on the issue of the event were offered and taken, just as if it were a horse-race or a coursing-match.

At length a well-known dandy, Fennimore by name, resolved to try the effect of an open direct attack; it was, he opined, the best way of conquering the sex.

So one day, when he had ascertained that Fanny was alone at home, he sent her a splendid bouquet of hot-house flowers, in which was concealed a _billet-doux_ of the following purport: If Fanny were inclined to reward the devotion of a loving heart, she was to leave the back door of the garden open in the evening.