AN ORIGINAL BELLE.

CHAPTER I.

A RUDE AWAKENING.





MARIAN VOSBURGH had been content with her recognized position
as a leading belle. An evening spent in her drawing-room revealed
that; but at the close of the particular evening which it was our
privilege to select there occurred a trivial incident. She was led
to think, and thought is the precursor of action and change in all
natures too strong and positive to drift. On that night she was
an ordinary belle, smiling, radiant, and happy in following the
traditions of her past.

She had been admired as a child, as a school-girl, and given a
place among the stars of the first magnitude since her formal debut.
Admiration was as essential as sunshine; or, to change the figure,
she had a large and a natural and healthful appetite for it. She was
also quite as much entitled to it as the majority of her class.
Thus far she had accepted life as she found it, and was in the
main conventional. She was not a deliberate coquette; it was not