smile and compliment, he
looked the very ideal of the well-drilled man of fashion. Sumner, though
he could not have talked less if he had been an English heavy
dragoon-officer, or an Hungarian refugee, understanding no language but
his own, was very useful for a quiet way he had of arranging every thing
beforehand without fuss or delay, and, moreover, had the peculiar merit
(difficult to explain, but which we have all observed in some person at
some period of our lives) of _being good company without talking_.
Benson, with less pretence and display than he had before exhibited,
showed an energy and indefatigableness almost equal to Le Roi's;
whatever he undertook, he "kept the pot a-boiling." In short, the people
of "our set," who were left, went on among themselves much better than
before, because the men's capabilities were not limited to dancing, and
the women had less temptation to be perpetually dressing. Besides, the
removal of most of the fashionables had encouraged the other portions of
the transient population to come more forward, and exhibit various
primitive specimens of dancing, and other traits worth observing. One
evening there was a "hop" at the Bellevue. Ashburner made a point of
always looking in at these assemblies for an hour or so, and
scrutinizing the company with the coolness and complacency which an
Englishman usually assumes in such places, as if all the people there
were made merely for his amusement. Benson, who had literally polked the
heel off one of his boots, and thereby temporarily disabled himself, was
lounging about with him, making observations on men, women, and things
generally.

"You wouldn't think that was only a girl of seventeen," said Harry, as a
languishing brunette, with large, liquid black eyes, and a voluptuous
figure, glided by them in the waltz. "How soon these Southerners
develope into women! They beat the Italians even."

"I wonder the young lady has time to grow, she dances so much. I have
watched her two or three evenings, and she has never rested a moment
except when the music stopped.--Something must suffer, it seems to me.
Does her mind develope uniformly with her person? She is a great centre
of attraction, I observe; is it only for her beauty and dancing?"

"I suppose a beautiful young woman, with fifty or sixty thousand a year,
may consider mental accomplishments as superfluous. She knows, perhaps,
as much as a Russian woman of five-and-twenty. How much that is