Until Bedtime

Even a woman, of mature age, despises
or laughs at such a passion. There occurred to me no mode of
accounting for Priscilla's behavior, except by supposing that she had
read some of Zenobia's stories (as such literature goes everywhere), or
her tracts in defence of the sex, and had come hither with the one
purpose of being her slave. There is nothing parallel to this, I
believe,--nothing so foolishly disinterested, and hardly anything so
beautiful,--in the masculine nature, at whatever epoch of life; or, if
there be, a fine and rare development of character might reasonably be
looked for from the youth who should prove himself capable of such
self-forgetful affection.

Zenobia happening to change her seat, I took the opportunity, in an
undertone, to suggest some such notion as the above.

"Since you see the young woman in so poetical a light," replied she in
the same tone, "you had better turn the affair into a ballad. It is a
grand subject, and worthy of supernatural machinery. The storm, the
startling knock at the door, the entrance of the sable knight
Hollingsworth and this shadowy snow-maiden, who, precisely at the
stroke of midnight, shall melt away at my feet in a pool of ice-cold
water and give me my death with a pair of wet slippers! And when the
verses are written, and polished quite to your mind, I will favor you
with my idea as to what the girl really is."