he could not help going, to be bored and disgusted for a
couple of hours."

"She went for my sake," said Margaret sentimentally. "Mamma would
have one of us go."

"Yes, that is it," thought I. Jealousy would have been ridiculous. He
fifty years old, she seventeen. I left the house, and went to find
Richards.

"What! Back so early?" cried he.

"She is gone to the theatre with her mamma and Moreland."

Richards shook his head.

"You put a wasp's nest into the old fellow's brain-pan yesterday,"
said he. "Take care you do not get stung yourself."

"I should like to see how she looks by his side," said I.

"Well, I will go with you. The sooner you are cured the better. But
only for ten minutes."

There was certainly no temptation to remain longer in that atmosphere
of whisky and tobacco fumes. It was at the Bowery theatre. The light
swam as though seen through a thick fog; and a perfect shower of
orange and apple peel, and even less agreeable things, rained down
from the galleries. Tom and Jerry were in all their glory. I looked
round the boxes, and soon saw the charming Arthurine, apparently
perfectly comfortable, chatting with old Moreland as gravely, and
looking as demure and self-possessed, as if she had been a married
woman of thirty.

"That is a prudent young lady," said Richards; "she has an eye to the
dollars, and would marry Old Hickory himself, spite of whisky and
tobacco pipe, if he had more money, and were to ask her."

I said nothing.

"If you weren't such an infatuated fool," continued my plain-spoken
friend, I would say to you, let her take her own way, and the day
after to-morrow we will leave New York."

"One week more," said I, with an uneasy feeling about the heart.

At seven the next evening I entered what had been my Elysium, but was
now, little by little, becoming my Tartarus. Again I found Margaret
alone over a romance. "And Arthurine?" enquired I, in a voice that
might perhaps have been steadier.

"She is gone with mamma and Mr Moreland to hear Miss Fanny Wright."

"To hear Miss Fanny Wright! the atheist, the revolutionist! What a
mad fancy! Who would ever have dreamed of such a thing!"

This Miss Fanny Wright was a famous lecturess, of the Owenite school,
who was shunned like a pestilence by the fashionable world of New
York.

"Mr Moreland," answered Margaret, "said so much about her eloquence
that Arthurine's curiosity was roused."

"Indeed!" replied I.

"Oh! you do not k