.
--_Song from The Monarch of Nil_.

The reader of this history may have been conscious, from time to time,
of a mysterious glow--now baleful, now rather cheerful, like the light
from the tap-room of an inn--which has illuminated the horizon of the
narrative. It appeared in certain allusions found in Mr. Alvord's
conversation with Mr. Amidon during the episode of the Wrong House, and
so terrified him as to give him thoughts of flight from Bellevale. It
glared more brightly in the chat at the Club. It flamed concretely on
our sight when Mr. Brassfield met its source on the street that day he
made his fatal escape. Mr. Alvord slangily called it "the Strawberry
Blonde." Mr. Brassfield very improperly pinched its elbow, and called
it "Daise." It is high time that we put on our smoked glasses and look
it in the face in such a formal introduction as will enable us to do it
tardy justice--for we may have been guilty of misjudgment!

Miss Daisy Scarlett, sitting on a piano-stool, with one foot curled up
under her, was entertaining Doctor Julia Brown and Miss Flossie Smith,
who had called on her at the home of Major Pumphrey, her uncle. Miss
Scarlett was well and shiveringly known in Bellevale, where she visited
often, and was generally esteemed for her many good qualities of heart
and mind, and for the infinite variety of her contributions to the
sensations of a not over-turbulent social swim. Her entertainment in
this instance consisted in readings from a certain book which must be
regarded as an early literary imprudence of a most estimable and
industrious, as well as improving writer--_Poems of Passion_. The
particular selection rendered by Miss Scarlett was the one (unknown, I
presume, to my readers--no, my dear, we haven't it) which informs us
what the first person singular feminine, being invited into Paradise,
would do if the third person singular masculine, down in the regions
infernal, should open his beautiful arms and smile. Miss Scarlett read
ill sentiments very well, and Miss Smith laid violent hands on herself
and looked shocked.

"Oh, Daisy!" she exclaimed, "don't, please don't!"

"Oh, Flossie!" said Miss Daisy imitatively, "don't pretend! That poem
is simply great!"

Doctor Brown laughed, quite in the manner of the bass villain in the
comic opera.

"The dissecting table," said she, "brings all these beautiful arms and
brows to the same dead level of tissue--unpoetical, but real."