she had conceived herself honored in the love of this young artist, moustacheless though he were, and by no means so elegantly winning in address as our friend Van? But, O Mary Jones! of whom as a heroine nothing but good should be predicated, how can I bring myself to declare what really occupied your thoughts? "Did they really and truly use a service of gold up in the 'Squirery yonder? and how fine it must be to dine off plate!" were the initial words of your reverie. And when young Elkhart had unswathed the graceful copy of your own unworthy self, and asked, with a slight dash of disappointment in his voice, perhaps, Was it not like the other, and Did n't you like it? it was not a flush of pleasure that rose to your cheek, so much as a blush for your own faithlessness.
"It is beautiful! How good you are to me!" she exclaimed, awaking with a start, and, as has been said, a blush; and leaning over the statuette, half concealed both her face and it in a cloud of curls; and be sure Elkhart repeated to himself many times on his way home those simple words, and built as many castles in Spain (though of different materials) as Mrs. Jones herself was doing about the same time.
That excellent lady, though no strategist, was as fond as her sex—and for the matter of that, ours, too—of having her own quiet way, and so the next forenoon, when our friend Van T., having yawned and bored himself to the extent of his capacity at home, bethought himself of paying the Joneses a morning visit, but in the end changed his mind, and sent a note instead, soliciting the pleasure of driving out Miss Jones in the cool of the afternoon; and when the fair recipient of the note remembered the trotting wagon in which Mr. Clarence and his friend had dashed by in Lafayette Place, and how delightful it must be, but recalled also a promise given to some body else the past evening, and sent a polite excuse, the widow, who took the message to the door in person, added a protocol to the effect that if Mary could not, Miss Columbia might: a message which amused Mr. Clarence, and of which, on cross-questioning the servant who brought it, he sagaciously divined the latent purport.
Therefore it was that without the least intention of honoring the last-named young lady, and to whom, though she had spent the major
