er love. She did not call it by that name; she did
not permit it to assert itself by any name; it was a mere formless joy
in her soul, a trustful and blissful expectance, which she now no more
believed he could disappoint than that she could die within that hour.
All the rebellion that she had sometimes felt at the anomalous attitude
exacted of her sex in regard to such matters was gone. She no longer
thought it strange that a girl should be expected to ignore the
admiration of a young man till he explicitly declared it, and should
then be fully possessed of all the materials of a decision on the most
momentous question in life; for she knew that this state of ignorance
could never really exist; she had known from the first moment that he
had thought her beautiful. To-night she was radiant for him. Her eyes
shone with the look in which they should meet and give themselves to
each other before they spoke--the look in which they had met already, in
which they had lived that whole day.

XIX.

The evening's entertainment was something that must fail before an
audience which was not very kind. They were to present a burlesque of
classic fable, and the parts, with their general intention, had been
distributed to the different actors; but nothing had been written down,
and, beyond the situations and a few points of dialogue, all had to
be improvised. The costumes and properties had been invented from such
things as came to hand. Sheets sculpturesquely draped the deities who
took part; a fox-pelt from the hearth did duty as the leopard skin of
Bacchus; a feather duster served Neptune for a trident; the lyre of
Apollo was a dust-pan; a gull's breast furnished Jove with his grey
beard.

The fable was adapted to modern life, and the scene had been laid in
Campobello, the peculiarities of which were to be satirised throughout.
The principal situation was to be a passage between Jupiter, represented
by Mavering, and Juno, whom Miss Anderson personated; it was to be
a scene of conjugal reproaches and reprisals, and to end in
reconciliation, in which the father of the gods sacrificed himself
on the altar of domestic peace by promising to bring his family to
Campobello every year.

This was to be followed by a sketch of the Judgment of Paris, in
which Juno and Pallas were to be personated by two young men, and Miss
Anderson took the part of Venus.

The pretty drawing-room of the Trevors--young people from Albany, and
cousi