es, and was famed far and wide for its
hospitality, but (it was whispered) this New Year ball was to excel all
others. The mansion stood in the centre of beautiful meadow-land, with a
background of dark pines, and these showed forth finely against the snow
which covered the lawns and feathered the branches of the tall
oak-trees in front of the door. Lanterns gleamed here and there, up the
drive and across the wide piazza; at the door were the colored servants,
in livery imported direct from England, and from within came sounds of
music. As Pompey swept his horses up to the step with an extra flourish
of his whip, a group of British officers, who had just alighted from
another sleigh, hastened to meet Clarissa and assist her descent.

"On my word, Clarissa," said Gulian, a few minutes later, as he offered
her his hand to conduct her to the ballroom, "I never saw Betty look so
lovely. Your pink brocade becomes her mightily, and her slender shape
shows forth charmingly. Where did you procure those knots of
rose-colored ribbon which adorn the waist? I do not remember them."

"That is my secret--and Betty's; she vowed the gown would not be
complete without them, so I indulged the child, and I find her taste in
dress perfect. Captain Sir John Faulkner seems greatly taken with her,
does be not?"

"Aye, but let us hasten to find our hostess. They will be forming for
the minuet directly, and you must dance it with me, sweet wife,--unless
you prefer another partner."

Clarissa's response to this lover-like speech was evidently
satisfactory, for presently Betty beheld her sister and Gulian take
places at the head of the room, next Madam De Lancey, who opened her
ball with Sir Henry Clinton. Betty, since her arrival in New York, had
been trained and tutored for the minuet by both Clarissa and Kitty, and
here was Captain Sir John Faulkner, an elderly but gallant beau,
supplicating for the honor of her hand in the opening dance.

"I am loth to decline," began Betty, a little overpowered by the
compliment, "but I have already promised this dance."

"To me," said Geoffrey Yorke, at her side, and looking up, Betty, for
the first time, saw her lover in all the bravery of full uniform,
powdered hair, and costly laces. If he had been strikingly handsome in
the old homespun clothes in which he first appeared before her on the
shores of Great Pond, he was ten times more so now. Betty forgot that
his coat was scarlet, that he represente