the palm of elegant attire with that lady. Her Christmas costume,
which, in many others of her age, would have been objected to by
critical fashionists, as old-maidish and grave, yet set off her pale
complexion--none of the Ayletts were rosy after they reached man's
or woman's estate--and heightened her distingue bearing into regal
grace. Yet it was only a heavy black silk, rich and glossy as satin,
cut, as was then the universal rule of evening dress, tolerably low
in the neck, with short sleeves; bunches of pomegranate-blossoms
and buds for breast and shoulder-knots, and among the classic braids
of her dark hair a half-wreath of the same.

She had the valuable gift of sitting still without stiffness, and
not fidgetting with fan, bouquet, or hand-kerchief, as she listened
or talked. Rosa's mercurial temperament betrayed itself, every
instant, in the bird-like turn of her small head, the fluttering or
chafing of her brown fingers, and not unfrequently by an impatient
stamp, or other movement of her foot that exposed fairy toe and
instep. Contemplation of the one rested and refreshed the observer;
of the other, amused and excited him. Mr. Dorrance's phlegmatic
nature found supreme content in dwelling upon the incarnation of
patrician tranquillity at his right hand, and he regarded the
actions of his frisky would-be tormentor very much as a placid,
well-gorged salmon would survey, from his bed of ease upon the
bottom of a stream, the gyrations of a painted dragon fly overhead.

A lull in the geteral conversation--the reaction after a hearty
laugh at a happy repartee--gave others besides Mabel the opportunity
of profiting by his learned remarks.

"But does not that seem to yon a short-sighted policy," he was