"'Maroon and green!' a 'baronial' hall, and new party-dresses for
insignificant me!" Mabel stopped to say aloud in great amusement.
"What would my sage brother have said to such paltry memoranda six
months ago? He is an apt scholar, or he has an able teacher. Ah,
well! love is a marvellous transmogrifier!"

With this apothegm from the storehouse of her lately acquired
wisdom, she passed to the next paragraph.

"Now for another matter about which I meant to write to you
yesterday, but I was prevented by our expedition to Lowell. The
evenings I of course devote to Clara. I have not been so engrossed
by my own very important concerns as to neglect yours. I stopped a
day in Philadelphia, illy as I could afford the time, to make such
investigations as I could, without exciting invidious suspicion,
into the character of the person whom I found domesticated at
Ridgeley on my return from my summer tour. The information I picked
up in that cautious city was so meagre and tantalizing as to provoke
me into the belief that he had selected his references with an eye
to the slenderness of their knowledge of his personal history.
Accident, however, has since placed within my reach a means of
learning all that I wish to know. Without wearying you with
explanations, which, indeed, I have no time to write--being engaged
to drive out with Clara in an hour from this time--I will transcribe
a portion of a letter received by me, two days since, from a
gentleman of unexceptional standing, and upon whose word you may
safely depend.

"He says: 'In reply to your queries as to my acquaintanceship with