Mr. Hayes yet enough to marry him--(it did not seem, indeed, in the
young woman's nature to care for anybody)--and she gave her adorer
flatteringly to understand that, if nobody better appeared in the
course of a few years, she might be induced to become Mrs. Hayes.
It was a dismal prospect for the poor fellow to live upon the hope
of being one day Mrs. Catherine's pis-aller.

In the meantime she considered herself free as the wind, and
permitted herself all the innocent gaieties which that "chartered
libertine," a coquette, can take. She flirted with all the
bachelors, widowers, and married men, in a manner which did
extraordinary credit to her years: and let not the reader fancy
such pastimes unnatural at her early age. The ladies--Heaven bless
them!--are, as a general rule, coquettes from babyhood upwards.
Little SHE'S of three years old play little airs and graces upon
small heroes of five; simpering misses of nine make attacks upon
young gentlemen of twelve; and at sixteen, a well-grown girl, under
encouraging circumstances--say, she is pretty, in a family of ugly
elder sisters, or an only child and heiress, or a humble wench at a
country inn, like our fair Catherine--is at the very pink and prime
of her coquetry: they will jilt you at that age with an ease and
arch infantine simplicity that never can be surpassed in maturer
years.

Miss Catherine, then, was a franche coquette, and Mr. John Hayes was
miserable. His life was passed in a storm of mean passions and
bitter jealousies, and desperate attacks upon the indifference-rock
of Mrs. Catherine's heart, which not all his tempest of love could
beat down. O cruel cruel pangs of love unrequited! Mean rogues
feel them as well as great heroes. Lives there the man in Europe