of the bells, the novel scenery of the sun-lighted, glittering
world around her, and, chief of all, her own abounding health and
animal life, combined to quicken her excitable nature into the
keenest enjoyment. From her red lips came ripples of laughter,
trills from operas, sallies of fun, that kept the entire party from
the thought of heaviness, and to honest-minded Hemstead were the
evidences of a happy, innocent heart.

With secret exultation she saw how rapidly and unconsciously the
unwary student was passing under the spell of her beauty and
witchery.

One must have been cursed with a sluggish, half-dead body and a
torpid soul, had he not responded to the influences under which
our gay party spent the next few hours. Innumerable snow-flakes
had carried down from the air every particle of impurity, and left
it sweet and wholesome enough to seem the elixir of immortal youth.
It was so tempered also, that it only braced and stimulated. The raw,
pinching coldness of the previous day was gone. The sun, undimmed
by a cloud, shone genially, and eaves facing the south were dripping,
the drops falling like glittering gems.

Now and then a breeze would career down upon them, and, catching
the light snow from the adjacent fence, would cast it into their
faces as a mischievous school-boy might.

"Stop that!" cried Lottie to one of these sportive zephyrs. "De
you call that a gust of wind? I declare it was a viewless sprite,
or a party of snow elves, playing their mad pranks upon us."