passion had already vanished out of
existence, and how much yet survived. For each of these inspections he
had to brush aside the calcined portion of the letter, once so warm
and beautiful with love, but changed to something that seemed to him a
semblance of his own heart just then,--black, trivial, and empty.

Then he took from a little folded paper a long tress of dark silken
hair, and, without trusting himself to kiss it, held it firmly in the
candle. It crisped and sparkled, and sent out a pungent odor, then
turned and writhed between his fingers, like a living thing in pain.
What part of us has earthly immortality but our hair? It dies not with
death. When all else of human beauty has decayed beyond corruption into
the more agonizing irrecoverableness of dust, the hair is still fresh
and beautiful, defying annihilation, and restoring to the powerless
heart the full association of the living image. These shrinking hairs,
they feared not death, but they seemed to fear Malbone. Nothing but the
hand of man could destroy what he was destroying; but his hand shrank
not, and it was done.

VII. AN INTERNATIONAL EXPOSITION.

AT the celebrated Oldport ball for the French officers, the merit of
each maiden was estimated by the number of foreigners with whom she
could talk at once, for there were more gentlemen than ladies, and not
more than half the ladies spoke French. Here Emilia was in her glory;
the ice being once broken, officers were to her but like so many
school-girls, and she rattled away to the admiral and the fleet captain
and two or three lieutenants at once, while others hovered behind the
circle of her immediate adorers, to pick up the stray shafts of what
passed for wit. Other girls again drove two-in-hand, at the most, in the
way of conversation; while those least gifted could only encounter one
small Frenchman in some safe corner, and converse chiefly by smiles and
signs.

On the whole, the evening opened gayly. Newly arrived Frenchmen are apt
to be so unused to the familiar society of unmarried girls, that the
most innocent share in it has for them the zest of forbidden fruit, and
the most blameless intercourse seems almost a bonne fortune. Most of
these officers were from the lower ranks of French society, but they all
had that good-breeding which their race wears with such ease, and can
unhappily put off with the same.

The admiral and the fleet captain were soon turned over to Hope, who
spoke