hospitable effort to welcome visitors at a season when a majority
of their friends had fled from the dreariness of winter to city
homes. Indeed, they regarded it as almost an honor that so prominent
a belle as Charlotte Marsden had consented to spend a few weeks
with them at a time when country life is at a large discount with
the fashionable. They surmised that the presence of Mr. De Forrest,
a distant relative of both Miss Marsden and themselves, would be
agreeable to all concerned, and were not mistaken; and to Miss
Lottie the presence of a few admirers--she would not entertain the
idea that they were lovers--had become an ordinary necessity of
life. Mr. De Forrest was an unusually interesting specimen of the
genus,--handsome, an adept in the mode and etiquette of the hour,
attentive as her own shadow, and quite as subservient.

His love-making would equal his toilet in elegance. All would be
delicately suggested by touch of hand or glance of eye, and yet he
would keep pace with the wild and wayward beauty in as desperate
a flirtation as she would permit.

Miss Lottie had left her city home with no self-sacrificing purpose
to become a martyr for the sake of country relatives. She had
wearied of the familiar round of metropolitan gayety; but life on
the Hudson during midwinter was an entire novelty. Therefore, as
her little brother had been included in the invitation, they had
started on what was emphatically a frolic to both.

Bel Parton, her companion, was another city cousin of the Marchmonts,
with whom they were in the habit of exchanging visits. She was
also an intimate of Lottie's, the two being drawn together by the
mysterious affinity of opposites.