hrown his cloak to his own servant, stood with the two other
gentlemen waiting the descent of the ladies from the upper room,
where the bad arrangements of the house compelled them to uncloak and
to put aside their shawls, "as I am told it is the best house in town
to see the other sex."

"To _hear them_, would be nearer the truth, perhaps," returned John
Effingham. "As for pretty women, one can hardly go amiss in New-York;
and your ears now tell you, that they do not come into the world to
be seen only."

The baronet smiled, but he was too well bred to contradict or to
assent. Mademoiselle Viefville, unconscious that she was violating
the proprieties, walked into the rooms by herself, as soon as she
descended, followed by Eve; but Grace shrank to the side of John
Effingham, whose arm she took as a step necessary even to decorum.

Mrs. Houston received her guests with ease and dignity. She was one
of those females that the American world calls gay; in other words,
she opened her own house to a very promiscuous society, ten or a
dozen times in a winter, and accepted the greater part of the
invitations she got to other people's. Still, in most other
countries, as a fashionable woman, she would have been esteemed a
model of devotion to the duties of a wife and a mother, for she paid
a personal attention to her household, and had actually taught all
her children the Lord's prayer, the creed, and the ten commandments.
She attended church twice every Sunday, and only staid at home from
the evening lectures, that the domestics might have the opportunity
of going (which, by the way, they never did) in her stead. Feminine,
well-mannered, rich, pretty, of a very positive social condition, and
naturally kind-hearted and disposed to sociability, Mrs. Houston,
supported by an indulgent husband, who so much loved to see people
with the appearance of happiness, that he was not particular as to
the means, had found no difficulty in rising to the pinnacle of
fashion, and of having her name in the mouths of all those who find
it necessary to talk of somebodies, in order that they may seem to be
somebodies themselves. All this contributed to Mrs. Houston's
happiness, or she fancied it did; and as every passion is known to
increase by indulgence, she had insensibly gone on in her much-envied
career until, as has just been said, she reached the summit.

"These rooms are very crowded," said Sir George, glancing his eyes
around two very