music, many accidents of meeting. It is all like a dream. At seventeen
it is so easy to dream! It does not take two weeks for a girl to fall in
love and make her whole life different.

It was Saturday evening, and Richard was expected; Richard and Kilian
and Mr. Eugene Whitney. Ah, Richard was coming just three weeks
too late.

We were all waiting on the piazza for them, in pretty toilettes and
excellent tempers. It was a lovely evening; the sunset was filling the
sky with splendor, and Charlotte and Henrietta had gone to the corner of
the piazza whence the river could be seen, and were murmuring fragments
of verses to each other. They were not so much absorbed, however, but
that they heard the first sound of the wheels inside the gate, and
hurried back to join us by the steps.

Mary Leighton looked absolutely lovely. The blue organdie had seen the
day at last, and she was in such a flutter of delight at the coming of
the gentlemen that she could scarcely be recognized as the pale, flimsy
young person who had moped so unblushingly all the week.

"They are all three there," she exclaimed with suppressed rapture, as
the carriage turned the angle of the road that brought them into sight.
Mrs. Hollenbeck, quite beaming with pleasure, ran down the steps (for
Richard had been away almost two months), and Mary Leighton was at her
side, of course. Charlotte Benson and Henrietta went half-way down the
steps, and I stood on the piazza by the pillar near the door.

I was a little excited by their coming, too, but not nearly as much so
as I might have been three weeks ago. A subject of much greater interest