mense
price. He had visited our agent himself, had invited the designer to
dinner, and now would not be satisfied until I had made him a visit
in Boston.

I went to his house. I passed up through broad stairways, and over
carpets such as I had never trod nor woven. I should have liked to
linger and satisfy my eyes with looking at the walls decorated with
paintings, and at the statuary, which seemed to beckon to me like moving
figures. But I passed on to the room where Mr. Stuart and his friends
awaited me. Here the first thing that struck me was the glowing carpet
across which I must tread. It was lying in an oval saloon, which had
been built, they told me, for the carpet itself. The light was admitted
only from the ceiling, which was so decorated that no clear sunlight
could penetrate it; but down below the sunbeams lay flickering in the
meadow of leaves, and shed a warm glow over the whole room.

But my eyes directly took in many things besides the flowery ground
beneath me. At one end of the room stood a colossal bust of Juno,
smiling grandly and imperturbably, as if she were looking out from the
great far-away past. I think this would have held my looks and my
attention completely, but that Mr. Stuart must introduce me to his
friends. So I turned my glance away; but it was drawn directly towards a
picture which hung before me,--a face that drove away all recollection
of the colossal goddess. The golden hair was parted over a broad brow;
from the gentle, dreamy eyes there came a soft, penetrating glance, and
a vagueness as of fancy rested over the whole face. I scarcely heard a
word that was spoken to me as I looked upon this new charm, and I could
hardly find answers for the questions that surrounded me.

But I was again roused from my dreamy wonderment by a real form that
floated in and sent away all visions of imagination. "My daughter," said
Mr. Stuart, and I looked up into the same dreamy eyes which had been
winning me in the picture. But these looked far beyond me, over me,
perhaps, or through me,--I could scarcely say which,--and the mouth
below them bent into a welcoming smile. While she greeted the other
guests, I had an opportunity to watch the stately grace of Mr. Stuart's
daughter, who played the part of hostess as one long accustomed to it.

"A queen!" I had exclaimed to myself, as she entered the room, "and my
Juno!"

The gentlemen to whom I had been introduced had been summoned earlier,
as in a l