h. Indeed there is a very choice collection of French prints which the
young men sometimes study over their cigars, but which are this evening
in the port-folio, which is not in sight.

The waiters move very softly. The wants of the guests are revealed to
them by being supplied. Quiet, elegance, luxury prevail.

"Really, Mr. Newt"--it is Mrs. Plumer, of New Orleans, who speaks--"you
have created Paris in Grand Street!"

"Ah! madame, it is you who graciously bring Versailles and the Tuileries
with you!"

He speaks to the mother; he looks, as he ends, again at the daughter.

The daughter for the first time is in the sanctuary of a bachelor--of a
young man about town. It is a character which always interests her--which
half fascinates her. Miss Plumer, of New Orleans, has read more French
literature of the lighter sort--novels and romances, for instance--than
most of the young women whom Abel Newt meets in society. Her eyes are
very shrewd, and she is looking every where to see if she shall not light
upon some token of bachelor habits--something that shall reveal the man
who occupies those pretty rooms.

Every where her bright eyes fall softly, but every where upon quiet,
elegance, and luxury. There is the Madonna; but there are also the
last winner at the Newmarket, the profile of Mr. Bulwer, and a French
landscape. The books are good, but not too good. There is an air of
candor and honesty in the room, united with the luxury and elegance, that
greatly pleased Miss Grace Plumer. The apartment leads naturally up to
that handsome, graceful, dark-haired, dark-eyed gentleman whose eye is
following hers, while she does not know it; but whose mind has preceded
hers in the very journey around the room it has now taken.

Sligo Moultrie sits beyond Miss Plumer, who is at the left of Mr. Newt.
Upon his right sits Mrs. Plumer. The friendly relations of Abel and Sligo
have not been disturbed. They seem, indeed, of late to have become even
strengthened. At least the young men meet oftener; not infrequently in
Mrs. Plumer's parlor. Somehow they are aware of each other's movements;
somehow, if one calls upon the Plumers, or drives with them, or walks
with them alone, the other knows it. And they talk together freely of all
people in the world, except the Plumers of New Orleans. In Abel's room of
an evening, at a late hour, when a party of youth are smoking, there
are many allusions to the pretty Plumer--to which it happens that Ne