added to, and embellished, in the most ornate and startling manner. It
was well known that only Lady Theobald's fine appreciation of Miss
Belinda Bassett's feelings had induced her to extend her hospitalities to
that lady's niece.

"I would prefer, my dear," said more than one discreet matron to her
daughter, as they attired themselves,--"I would much prefer that you
would remain near me during the earlier part of the evening, before we
know how this young lady may turn out. Let your manner toward her be
kind, but not familiar. It is well to be upon the safe side."

What precise line of conduct it was generally anticipated that this
gold-digging and silver-mining young person would adopt, it would be
difficult to say: it is sufficient that the general sentiments regarding
her were of a distrustful, if not timorous, nature.

To Miss Bassett, who felt all this in the very air she breathed, the
girl's innocence of the condition of affairs was even a little touching.
With all her splendor, she was not at all hard to please, and had quite
awakened to an interest in the impending social event. She seemed in good
spirits, and talked more than was her custom, giving Miss Belinda graphic
descriptions of various festal gatherings she had attended in New York,
when she seemed to have been very gay indeed, and to have worn very
beautiful dresses, and also to have had rather more than her share of
partners. The phrases she used, and the dances she described, were all
strange to Miss Belinda, and tended to reducing her to a bewildered
condition, in which she felt much timid amazement at the intrepidity of
the New-York young ladies, and no slight suspicion of the "German"--as a
theatrical kind of dance, involving extraordinary figures, and an
extraordinary amount of attention from partners of the stronger sex.